The Ghost Orchid (7 page)

Chapter Five

“The third line is the prisoner of the rhyme,” Zalman announces at breakfast.

“Why is that?” I ask.

“I should think it would be obvious,” Bethesda says, lifting the silver serrated spoon (part of the original silverware Aurora designed for Bosco when, at the end of her life, she was planning the estate’s conversion to an artists’ colony) from the edge of her grapefruit and pointing it in my direction. “It’s the first line that has to conform to one of the other lines. It has to rhyme with the first line if you’re writing an Elizabethan sonnet—”

“And with the second if it’s going to be a Petrarchan sonnet,” Zalman finishes for her, beaming across the table at Bethesda. “You’re a fan of the sonnet, then, Miss Graham?”

Bethesda saws a sliver of grapefruit onto her spoon and chews it thoughtfully before answering. I realize I’m holding my breath, afraid that Bethesda will unleash one of her critical storms on poor Zalman, who looks so innocent, from his gleaming bald pate to the sprig of rosemary in the buttonhole of his pale blue Mexican wedding shirt.

“When it’s done well,” Bethesda answers, when she has swallowed her mouthful of grapefruit.

“I don’t see the point of it,” Nat says. “Why write in an antiquated form? Isn’t it a bit of an affectation?”

“My teacher, Richard Scully, always said that there was a discipline to working within a form,” I say, anxious to defend Zalman.

“
Dick
Scully?” Nat asks, taking a sip of his black coffee. “Is he the one who encouraged to you to write a gothic romance?”

“I’m not—” I begin, not sure what to be more hurt by—the disparaging way he’s referred to my mentor or his calling my novel a
romance.

“Isn’t everything a form of some sort?” David Fox puts in. I give him a small smile, sure that he’s trying to defend me, but wishing he’d leave it. It’s foolhardy, really, considering he’s the only nonwriter at the table. In the first week of October all the artists and composers in the outlying cottages left; only the four of us writers and David Fox have remained in the main house for the winter residency. “The thriller, the gothic romance, the novel of manners,” David continues, “the angry-young-man bildungsroman? Isn’t that your genre, Nathaniel?”

A deathly silence falls over the table that only Zalman, humming to himself as he butters his toast, seems oblivious of. Has David really just called Nat Loomis a genre writer? Although I know he’s only trying to speak up for me, I’m afraid he’s gone too far.

Finally, after taking another sip of coffee and assembling his features into the patient mask of someone dealing with a very young and not very bright child, Nat answers. “Some writers are slaves to the form. They’re called genre writers. And some endeavor to explode the form. They’re called artists.”

“I see,” David says, “and so what exactly in your novel
Saratoga
—”

“
Sacandaga,
” Nat corrects, his hand trembling slightly as he puts down his coffee cup.

“Yes,
Sacandaga.
What in
Sacandaga
explodes the form? If I recall, it’s about a boy staying at his grandfather’s cottage for the summer—”

“You’ve read it?” Nat asks with barely disguised surprise. His voice is calm, but his hand, still touching the rim of his coffee cup, is trembling. I can hear the faint ring of china rattling against china and the wings of the bluebirds painted on the cup are fluttering. “I didn’t realize your reading extended beyond Burpee’s seed catalog.”

“Boys,” Bethesda says reprovingly, but Nat and David both smile at her as if they each had no idea what her problem might be. They’re engaged in a friendly discussion, their faces say, but only a fool—or someone as innocent of envy and malice as Zalman Bronsky—wouldn’t feel the tension in the room. I can’t help but feel partly responsible, since David started this to protect me, and, oddly, I feel sorry for Nat. When he gets angry or scared, I’ve noticed, his ears quiver and you can imagine what he looked like as a kid. I can picture him as that boy in his first novel, hiding in the woods behind his grandfather’s cottage, scared of the old man and trying to get a moment to himself to read instead of having to go out again on those dreaded fishing trips. I can almost hear his grandfather’s stern voice calling him,
Nathaniel
—

“Oh, I like a novel now and again,” David drawls. He’s from Texas, I’ve learned, but only sounds that way when it suits him. “And I liked yours fine. Especially the fishing parts. Only I don’t really see what makes it any different from any other boy-growing-up story, say
The Catcher in the Rye,
or Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories—”

“I’d be happy to include myself in that company,” Nat says, his ears twitching. I get another clear picture of him as a boy, leaning against a tree, reading—

“Of course,” I say, “those are classic influences. It’s not as if Nat modeled his book on the Hardy Boys—”

A crashing sound cuts short my ill-conceived intervention. Nat’s coffee cup lies in its saucer, in a mess of blue and white splinters and black coffee. Nat himself is already out the door, Bethesda following close behind him. Zalman looks up surprised and then begins mopping up the black coffee with his napkin. David looks at me and laughs.

“What’s so funny?” I say.

“Don’t you see?” he says. “Nat’s just exploded his form!”

I head outside after breakfast. I feel that I need a breath of fresh air after the altercation between Nat and David, but it’s colder than I expected. Indian summer, which had lingered through the first weeks of October, has come to an abrupt end. The ilex trees are still green, but much of the surrounding foliage has turned color and fallen. Having grown up in northwest New York, the abruptness of autumn shouldn’t surprise me and yet, when I first saw the gardens in all their overgrown greenery, I imagined them staying like that throughout the winter. Now, though, there are denuded spots in the hillside where statues that lay hidden through the summer peer out, their lichen-stained faces and broken limbs appearing trapped in the tangle of bare branches. I remember the demonic face of the Green Man that David showed me weeks ago and wonder what else lies beneath the underbrush waiting to be uncovered.

Although it’s definitely too cold to work outside in the garden today, I can’t bear the thought of going back to my room. It’s a perfectly nice room—certainly the most luxurious one I’ve ever slept in—but I’ve been feeling increasingly uneasy in it, especially in the mornings, when the sound of Nat’s manual typewriter beats a maddening rhythm in my skull and the image of him at his desk seems to invade my room. I especially don’t want to listen to it today after what happened in the breakfast room. Nat must hate me now, I think, heading down the path on the west side of the hill. What on earth possessed me to mention the Hardy Boys?

But then I know what it was. The picture of young Nat I conjured up, hiding in the woods. He’d been reading one of the Hardy Boys stories. Surely it was a detail I just plucked from the air—maybe it was even in Nat’s novel—but no, I remember now that along with the vision I had I heard Nat’s grandfather calling him. He called him Nathaniel, not the name of the narrator in the novel. And when I heard the voice, what I felt was that I understood why Nat hates to be called Nathaniel, because
he
called him that. Maybe if I could explain to Nat . . . what? That I heard voices? That I
felt his pain.
I could just imagine how he’d react to that.

“I swear I didn’t tell her.”

The voice comes from around the next bend in the path. I freeze and wait, willing the voice to go away. I’ve heard enough voices this morning. But it continues, “Why on earth would I even talk to her? She’s a hack! And a plagiarist! She stole my title.”

No, this isn’t a voice in my own head. It’s Bethesda Graham. And although I’d certainly guessed what she thought of me, I’m stung by her words.
Hack, plagiarist.
I turn around and walk quickly back up the hill, but the words pursue me. I know I’ve put too much distance between us, but it’s as if I can still hear their condemnation.
Phony, fake.
In my eagerness to get away from them, I head off the path. The sound I make crashing through the dry underbrush is deafening, but I can still hear the insults, only they’re no longer in Bethesda’s voice. I can’t recognize these voices, there are so many, a throng of them, as if in a crowded auditorium, jeering at me.
Charlatan, fraud, witch.
Thorns drag at my clothes like hands plucking at me, trying to drag me down.

When I break free from the brush, I’m scratched and breathless. I struggle up onto the terrace and head for the French doors that lead into the library. A gust of wind snakes in at my heels as if it had been coiled in the shrubbery, only waiting for an opportunity to gain entrance to the house. When I finally close the doors, I lean my back against them and breathe in the silence. The two Morris chairs by the fire are empty, the cushions on the side divans still fresh and undented from the morning housekeeping rounds. Standing on the threshold, I have a sense of relief that seems to go well beyond the good luck of getting the library to myself. It’s as if real pursuers had chased me up the hill and I have come here seeking refuge from danger, instead of just a quiet place to get some work done. Then I hear a rustling from the alcove and realize I’m not alone after all.

Coming farther into the room, I see David Fox, ensconced at the library table in the alcove, drawings and blueprints spread out on it and every available nearby surface.

“Oh, I guess I’d better find someplace else—” I begin, but before I can finish my sentence, David has sprung up from his seat, scattering sheets of paper to the floor.

“No, don’t go,” he says. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to show you.” He pulls me to the desk and begins riffling through a thick pile of blueprints. There must be a dozen of them, each as large as a full
New York Times
page, stretched out on the mission library table and held down by an assortment of smooth white stones. When he moves the stones back from the edge of one, it springs into a roll, like a pill bug curling into itself, only the paper, which is old and dry, snaps like a small firecracker. I look over my shoulder nervously, sure that at any moment we will be rebuked for breaking the sacred silence of Bosco.

“It’s in here someplace,” David says, apparently unconcerned about the “no talking” rule. “I thought it would help you in following the movements of your characters.”

“That’s okay,” I tell him. “I have a floor plan of the house that I’m working with and I’ve made a rough sketch of the garden. I should really be getting back to work—” I take a step backward, but David still has a hold of my hand.

“You’re still mad at me for what happened this morning. Honestly, Ellis, I didn’t realize Nat couldn’t take a little ribbing. And I was tired of hearing him and Beth ragging on you.”

“I don’t need your protection,” I say, a little more coldly than I’d meant to . . . I can see the hurt in his eyes. “But I appreciate what you were trying to do.”

“Nah, you’re still mad . . . but I’m going to make it up to you. You don’t have any floor plan like this,” he says, grinning. “And as for the garden—”

He stops midsentence and lifts a finger to his lips. I hear it, too—the rusty latch of the French doors opening. Although I’m embarrassed to be caught “conversing” during writing hours, I’m startled by the violence of David’s reaction, which is to gather up an armful of blueprints and shove me into the narrow gap between the bookcase and the alcove wall. I can see Bethesda come in, take a book down from a shelf, and sit down in one of the Morris chairs by the fireplace. She doesn’t, however, open the book. Instead she stares into space, her eyes unnaturally wide, as if she’s holding back tears.

I turn to David, who’s so close that his face is practically touching mine, and turn my palms up.
What are we supposed to do now?
I hope to convey by the gesture,
There’s no other way out of the library.

But David is grinning, his face at this close range disturbingly like the stone satyrs in the garden. He reaches around the back of the bookcase, as if feeling for a light switch, and suddenly the bookcase swings open silently on well-oiled hinges.

I can feel my mouth open, gaping like one of the fountain satyrs, but luckily David has already disappeared into the dark passage and can’t see how ridiculous I look.