The Unloved (6 page)

“Okay,” Jeff agreed. “But you have to invite me to your house too.”

The eagerness faded from Toby’s eyes and he looked uncertainly up at Marguerite. “We’ll see,” she promised him. “But as long as Jeff’s here, you come out here any time you want to.”

A few minutes later, as Toby started threading his way back along the path across the island and toward the causeway, Marguerite led Julie and Jeff up the beach toward the old mansion. They walked in silence for a few minutes, then Julie spoke shyly.

“Aunt Marguerite? Why won’t Grandmother let anyone use the beach? It’s so beautiful, it seems like everybody should get to use it.”

Marguerite said nothing for a while, then put her arm around Julie’s shoulders. “It’s just the way Mother is,” she said at last. “There isn’t any reason, really. It’s just that it’s
our
beach, and Mother always worries about what’s
ours.”
She fell silent for a moment, then: “But it won’t always be that way.”

Jeff looked up curiously. “Why not?”

Marguerite smiled sadly. “Because she’s dying, Jeff. And when she dies, things will be different.”

For several minutes the trio walked in silence, then Julie spoke again. “Aunt Marguerite, don’t you care if Grandmother dies? I mean, she’s your mother.”

Marguerite stopped walking and stared up at the weathered mansion surrounded by its protective grove of oaks, then her gaze drifted out to scan the sea. Finally her eyes came to rest on Julie. “Oh, yes,” she said. “I care that Mother is going to die. I care very much.” Taking Julie by the hand, she turned and started up the slope toward the great house.

That evening five people gathered around the huge table in the dining room of Sea Oaks. Kevin sat at the head of the table, with Anne and Marguerite to his right. Opposite their mother and aunt sat Julie and Jeff, and far down the table,
empty and somehow removed from the group while still dominating it, sat the chair that Helena Devereaux would have occupied had she been well enough to come downstairs. But she had not come down. Instead, upon waking from her nap she had summoned Marguerite and told her that she would take dinner, as usual, in her room.

Five minutes after Ruby served the soup, the angry sound of the buzzer rent the conversation. Without a word Marguerite folded her linen napkin and moved stiffly out of the dining room. The family listened to her limping up the stairs.

A few minutes later she was back. Slipping into her chair, she resumed eating her soup as if nothing had happened.

The buzzer sounded again as Ruby was serving the entrée, and yet again before Marguerite had finished her salad.

When the buzzer sounded once more as Ruby was putting bowls of ice cream on the table, Marguerite again folded her napkin, but before she could leave the table, Anne spoke, smiling uncertainly at her sister-in-law. “Why don’t you eat your ice cream before it melts? Whatever it is this time, surely it can wait a few minutes?”

Marguerite shook her head apologetically. “She hates to be kept waiting, and I don’t mind, really. I’ve been doing it so long, I don’t think I’d know what to do if I got through a meal without her calling me.” Setting her napkin down, she hurried once more out of the dining room to laboriously climb the stairs.

Only when she was certain that Marguerite was out of earshot did Anne face her husband, no longer attempting to keep the anger out of her eyes or her voice. “Why didn’t you say something, Kevin? Your mother treats her like a slave! Shouldn’t she at least be allowed to finish her dinner?”

“You heard her,” Kevin said mildly. “I really don’t think she minds. And she’s used to it.”

“But her leg!” Anne exclaimed. “You can see that it hurts her. And for that awful old woman to make her run up and down the stairs all the time—well, frankly, I don’t see why she puts up with it! If I were Marguerite, I’d have put her in a home years ago!” And yet, despite her brave words, Anne wondered if she were speaking the truth. Wasn’t it more
likely, given the strength she’d seen in Helena earlier, that she, too, would have given in to the woman’s demands rather than face her wrath? She suspected she would have.

Kevin shrugged. “I don’t disagree with you. In fact, I think you’re right—I wouldn’t tolerate it, and I wouldn’t expect anyone else to either. That’s why I got out—it was either that or knuckle under to her. But Marguerite’s not like me—she deals with things, and she doesn’t complain. She never even complained about her leg.”

Julie put down her spoon and faced her father. “What happened to her?” she asked.

“An accident,” Kevin replied. “I was just a little boy, and she was in her teens. I don’t remember much about it, really, but she fell down the stairs and broke her hip. She was in the hospital for a while, and in a cast for a long time. But it never healed properly, and she’s had that limp ever since.” His lips tightened into a grim line. “She was going to be a dancer, and I guess she was damned good at it. The accident put an end to that, but I can’t ever remember hearing her complain about that either. In a lot of ways,” he added, “your aunt is a remarkable woman.” He smiled. “And in a lot of ways, you’re very much like her. You look like her, and you dance like her, and sometimes when I hear you talk, I’d swear I was listening to Marguerite when she was your age.”

Julie’s brows arched. “Well, I like her, but if Mom ever treated me the way Grandmother treats Aunt Marguerite, I sure wouldn’t be around very long.”

Kevin chuckled. “All right, so you’re not exactly like her. Which is fine with me. I like you just the way you are.” Then his voice turned serious again. “And as for your mother treating you the way my mother treats Marguerite, you needn’t worry about it. If your mother were anything like mine, you can believe I wouldn’t have married her.”

Anne drew herself up in mock indignation. “That, Kevin, has to be the weakest compliment I’ve ever received. From what I’ve seen today, nobody in the world is like—”

But before she could finish, there was a sudden shrieking from upstairs, followed by a loud thump. Instantly Kevin and Anne rose to their feet and hurried up the stairs, followed by
Julie and Jeff. Behind them, moving her bulk more slowly, Ruby, too, started up the stairs.

Kevin opened the door to his mother’s bedroom to find the old woman propped against her pillows, her eyes fixed furiously on Marguerite, who was sprawled on the floor by the bed, her lame leg twisted beneath her, her face contorted into a grimace of pain.

Kevin glanced quickly at his mother, then dropped to the floor to help Marguerite. “What happened?” he asked.

Marguerite looked at him ruefully. “She said I didn’t get her dinner up quickly enough, and it was cold.”

Kevin’s jaw dropped as he stared at the plate of untouched food on his mother’s tray. “But—for Christ’s sake! You brought it up an hour ago, before we even started. Didn’t she eat it?”

Marguerite shook her head quickly, but said nothing. Kevin stood up, glaring at his mother and the heavy cane still clutched in her hand. Suddenly he understood. “So you hit her, Mother? You sat there while it got cold, then called Marguerite up here so you could hit her with your cane?”

Helena’s eyes narrowed dangerously, and when she spoke, her voice was a malevolent hiss. “Watch what you say, Kevin. You don’t know her as I do. You haven’t been here! You went away and left us alone! Don’t you start criticizing now, young—”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Mother,” Kevin snapped. “Stop behaving like a child. Marguerite, come on. Ruby can reheat it, or I’ll do it myself. But you come back down and finish your dinner.”

Marguerite started to get up from the floor, but before she had regained her feet, Helena’s voice lashed out like a whip.

“No! I want her to do it, Kevin! If she’s going to spend her life acting like a servant, who are you to stop her?”

Stunned, Kevin looked down at his sister.

Though her eyes had filled with tears, Marguerite said nothing. Instead, she simply pulled herself unsteadily to her feet, and picked up her mother’s tray.

*      *      *

It was long after midnight when Kevin slid out of bed, careful not to disturb Anne, whose breathing had slipped into the regular rhythms of sleep hours before. Kevin himself had lain awake, feeling the house around him, his nostrils filled with the familiar scents of his childhood, the summer night heavy with the shrill sounds of tropical insects. All of it seemed so far in the past and yet was still so familiar.

But the image that hung in his mind was that of Marguerite, crouched painfully on the floor, betraying nothing of her pain and humiliation, quietly suffering her mother’s fury. How long had it been like this? he wondered. And why had Marguerite never called him, never told him what was happening and what her life had come to?

Or did she even realize that her existence didn’t have to be tied to a bitter woman who was living in the past?

Knowing he wasn’t going to drift into sleep, he put on a light robe and went out into the broad corridor, closing the door behind him. He needed no lights—every inch of the house seemed familiar to him, and as he moved along the hall toward the main staircase, he remembered each of the rooms as he passed them.

Even when he was a child, the many guest rooms of the mansion had already begun to deteriorate, for the wide circle of wealthy friends his grandparents had once entertained had long since disappeared, along with the large staff of servants necessary to keep up the house in the manner for which it was designed. Though he hadn’t yet looked at them, he was certain they were just as he remembered them, although no doubt more faded—the Blue Room, the Emerald Room, the Rose Room—all of them with their damask wallpaper, their matching carpets, their marble fireplaces.

He moved down the stairs, through the small reception room and into the main salon, instinctively sidestepping the bench of the grand piano. He switched on the crystal lamp on the table behind the Louis XVI sofa, and the room was suffused with a soft glow that couldn’t quite wash the shadows away from the far corners. He crossed toward the double doors that led through a small solarium to the dining room,
pausing for a moment to gaze up at the portrait of his mother above the fireplace.

Done in France by a society painter who had been the rage among touring Americans, his mother was posed in the formal costume of a danseuse of her day, her hair drawn back from her face, her high cheekbones needing no makeup to accentuate them. One hand was lifted gracefully, and her left leg was oddly bent, as if she were about to loft herself to her toes. Kevin stared at the picture for several minutes, trying to see in that youthful face any faint hints of the haggard and bitter harridan the portrait’s subject had become.

There were none.

He moved on, then, pausing in the solarium, but passing quickly through the dining room and the butler’s pantry to the enormous old-fashioned kitchen. Little here had changed since he was a boy. The ancient range still stood against the far wall, opposite the immense built-in iceboxes that had been electrified long before he was born. An array of enormous pots and pans, their copper still kept immaculate by Ruby, hung on the rack above the long counter, but he was certain they weren’t used anymore, for next to the sink, stacked neatly in a draining rack, was the cook ware Ruby had used for that evening’s dinner—small pans, of a size to serve six instead of sixteen or twenty-six.

At last he opened the refrigerator, pulled out the remains of the roast, found some bread, and made himself a sandwich. He sat down at the table next to the window and listened for a while to the sounds of the house.

A light breeze had come up, and limbs brushed against the house’s siding. Everywhere there were faint creaks as the old wood adjusted to the slightly cooler temperature of the night.

And then, slowly, he began to feel a creeping sensation on the back of his neck. The hairs stood on end and a faint chill passed over him.

A plank of the floor creaked loudly, and he started, turning quickly, not certain what to expect.

Ruby stood at the door to her room, her old eyes fixed on him, her expression strangely blank. She smiled faintly and moved toward him.

“Can’t sleep, can you, Mr. Kevin,” she said softly. “Just like when you were a boy. Well, I reckon you’re gonna have to get used to more nights like that, now that you’ve come home.”

Kevin frowned and shook his head. “Not many, Ruby,” he replied. “And I haven’t come home. My home is in Connecticut. I’m just here for a couple of weeks’ vacation.”

Ruby settled her weight into the chair opposite him, grunting slightly with the effort. “Not a couple of weeks,” she said. “You’re back, and you’ll stay back. No Devereaux has ever left Sea Oaks yet.”

Kevin cocked his head, his brows rising. “I did. I’ve been gone a long time, Ruby. I’m not coming back.”

“That’s not what Miz Helena says,” Ruby countered. “She says you done come back and you going to stay. And you ask me, if that’s what she says, that’s what she mean. You’ll stay.”

Kevin’s voice hardened slightly. “I didn’t ask you, Ruby,” he said. “But since you’ve taken it upon yourself to tell me, let me answer you. I don’t give a damn what my mother wants, and haven’t since I was eight years old. No more than she’s given a damn what I want. So why would I stay? I love my family, and I love my life, and I have no intention of changing it. Certainly,” he added, glancing meaningfully around the ancient kitchen, “not to live in this relic and try to pretend there’s anything left in Devereaux for any of us. The town’s dead, Ruby, and so is the house. When Mother’s gone—if Mother’s gone—I’ll be gone too. But even if she lives awhile longer, I won’t be staying.”

Ruby said nothing, only watching him with her nearly black eyes. At last she heaved herself slowly to her feet and started back toward her room. She had nearly reached the door when she stopped and turned back.

“I understand what you’re saying, Mr. Kevin,” she said. “But I know what Miz Helena means. You
are
a Devereaux, Mr. Kevin, and you
will
stay at Sea Oaks. That’s just the way things are. Don’t try to fight it, Mr. Kevin. It won’t do you no good at all. None.” Before he could reply, she disappeared
into her own room and silently closed the door behind her.