The War of the Roses (2 page)

'Anyway, I like baking. It's fun. And the pay's good.'

'Unless you spend it all.' He pointed to the figure wrapped in soggy newspapers.

'You, too.' She laughed and he noticed that her eyes were really hazel and had turned from green to brown in the late-afternoon light.

'I guess I just like old things. They'll be worth more than money someday. Like these figures.' 'You can't eat them.'

'Unfortunately not. Anyway, I'll have to avoid temptation. Better stay away from auctions,' he told her. 'Harvard Law is damned expensive. I start in the fall.
My
deal with my folks is that they pay tuition and I pay living expenses.'

They were huddled together in the tiny storefront entrance. When she spoke, he felt her warm breath against his cheek. A current, he knew, was passing between them. Something wonderful and mysterious. He felt her response.

'Don't give him away,' he said, sensing his note of pleading. It was, after all, a symbol of their meeting. 'Not yet.'

'It's mine,' She pouted with mock sarcasm, holding it over his head like a club.

'One isn't much good without the other,' he said. 'It's a twosome.'

'I beat you fair and square,' she said.

'Well, the battle isn't over yet,' Oliver whispered, wondering if she had heard his voice above the beat of the rain.

'Not yet,' she agreed, smiling. She
had
heard him.

2

Through the dormer window of her third-floor room, Ann saw him open the side door of the garage. Holding his toolbox, he moved over the flagstone walk toward the house. A reddish spear of light from the slipping September sun bounced off the metal tools la
id neatl
y in the box. Starded by the sudden glinting beam, she moved back
out of the dormer's niche, her
heart pounding.

Hoping that she was out of his field of vision, she watched him pause and reattach a string of English ivy that had fallen from the high cedar fence. The fence formed a backdrop for a line of still-maturing arborvitaes that separated the back garden from the neighbor's.

Seldom could she study him so minutely, free of her self-consciousness and clumsy shyness. Besides, she was certain that Oliver Rose viewed her as a country bumpkin from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, that is, if he ever took the time to assess her seriously.

In his beige corduroys and blue plaid shirt, he looked oddly miscast as a man who worked with his hands most of his spare time. Even in his basement workroom -
surrounded by his neatly hung power tools; his nuts,
bolts, nails, and screws in littl
e glass containers; his circular saw, lathe, and myriad mechanical gewgaws -he could not shed the image of his regular calling, a Washington lawyer. Or, as he characterized himself: 'Just a plodding barrister.'

The deepening orange light set off his wavy, prematurely salty gray hair, which he still wore long, despite
the new convention. His lightly speckled thick mustache and jet-black eyebrows gave him the look of an anglicized Omar Sharif, a resemblance quickly dissipated when his wide smile flashed and his blue eyes caught the right light, giving away his Irish antecedents.

If Oliver could have surmised the extent of her interest, he would have been flattered, of course, but appalled. Ann herself was appalled. The sensation had crept up on her, like the muggers who, she had been warned, prowled the Washington streets. Not here in the Kalorama section, of course, where there were almost as many embassies and legations as private residences and, therefore, fully protected by a vast army of special police. Her newly acquired neighborhood snobbery amused her as she recalled her sense of logic. She was afflicted, she decided, tearing her eyes from the dormer window, with an adolescent crush, an emotional aberration hardly worthy of a twenty-two-year-old woman. She was, after all, despite the warmth of her acceptance in the Roses' household, merely a glorified
au pair
girl. The label, she knew, was unfair to them. They tried so hard to make her part of the family, and the free room and board, traded for vaguely defined 'services', gave her the wherewithal to pursue her history master's at Georgetown University.

Looking suddenly about her room, she could not repress a joyful giggle as she recalled the flat offer of 'room and board' that had tantalized her in the classified pages of
The Washington Post.

Barbara had described each piece of furniture with the confident authority of a museum guide. Ann had no knowledge of antiques. Yet living among these pieces of tangible history piqued her interest and she would wonder how other past lives had fared among these objects.

In one corner of the room was a sleigh bed, circa 1840s; beside it an inlaid-mahogany Empire table on which stood an Art Nouveau Tiffany lamp guarded by a rustic Staffordshire porcelain milkmaid who had wandered in from the downstairs collection. On one wall was a chest-on-chest festooned with intricate ormolu and a French
bibliotheque
with glass doors. Near the dormer was an English folding desk on which rested a hurricane lamp.

'We get a knee-jerk reaction every time we get near an antique auction,' Barbara explained. 'We're like antique junkies. We even met at one. There's no more room to put things.'

'It's fantastic,' Ann had replied.

'We've been at it for years,' Barbara told her. 'But they say that people who collect never really stop. Maybe we're afraid to . . .' Her voice trailed off as if she were wary of the sudden intimacy. 'Anyway,' she had chirped, recovering her lightness, 'you can commune with all the ghosts of times past.'

'With pleasure,' Ann had said. 'My major is history.'

But if the 'room' part was overwhelming, the 'board' part staggered her. Ann remained endlessly fascinated with the Roses' kitchen.

It was a carpeted rectangle lined with French provincial walnut cabinetry and rough stucco walls, designed to resemble a French country kitchen. Built into the walls were two double sinks, two double ovens - one electric, one gas - a huge refrigerator with an outside , ice-water tap, a matching freezer, and a dishwasher. Also built in were tiers of open shelving filled with cookbooks, botdes, spices, canned goods, pots, pans, plates, jugs, trays, and bowls of various shapes and sizes. Huge drawers containing silver and flatware were fitted below the counter tops. Shiny copper pots and pans hung on hooks in various corners and cubbies. And on the counter tops were a microwave oven, two blenders, a coffee maker, a toaster oven, a warming oven; an inventory that never failed to expand in Ann's eye with each inspection.

In the center of the kitchen was a large rectangular island over which hung a huge hood. Built into the island was another stainless-steel sink, two four-burner stoves - one electric, one gas - an army of utensils, collanders, ladles, spatulas, pans, and more pots hanging from the hood; a wooden box filled with upended knives in slots, a wide marble top built into the cutting-board counter, and an electric kitchen center designed to accommodate a variety of mixing bowls and whatnots.

Remembering her mother's broken-down, noisy refrigerator, the gas stove with a pilot light that never seemed to work, and the chipped and stained porcelain fixtures, Ann felt she had wandered into a fantasy land.

'I cook,' Barbara had announced, the understatement obviously carefully honed from long use. Ann followed her into an alcove that served as a storage pantry and in which was a large, humming, temperature-controlled wine vault.

'We planned and built it together,' Barbara explained to the baffled Ann. 'Oliver's a whiz at fixing and making things. And I've got a degree in plumbing from the school of hard knocks.'

She was, Ann remembered, as eager to make a good impression as Barbara was to be ingratiating. Yes, there was a certain indelibility about their first meeting, despite the confusing, information-packed grand tour.

Barbara had given particularly detailed descriptions of every piece in the dining room.

'Duncan Phyfe,' she said, rapping her knuckles on the shiny table. 'Queen Anne chairs. And that rococo monstrosity is my favorite.' She had pointed to an elaborate candelabrum with room for more than a dozen candles. 'Decadent, don't you think?'

‘I
guess they knew things would outlive human beings,' Ann replied, patting a marble-top credenza for emphasis.

At that first meeting, Barbara's curvaceous figure was encased in tight jeans and a T-shirt on which the word
hausfrau
was stretched tautl
y over ample bosom, intimidating the statement. She possessed, as a miner's daughter like Ann would observe, Slavic good looks: deep-set hazel eyes, peering cautiously behind apple-contoured cheekbones, under a broad forehead. Her chestnut hair was cut to cascade, like a wild brook, down either side of her head, almost to her broad shoulders, which served as a sturdy crosspiece for her magnificent bosom.

'I'm going pro,' Barbara had announced, as if it were necessary to explain the kitchen. She had flashed a wide, ingenuous smile, growing momentarily wistful. 'Hell, I've got the talent and the facilities. That's for sure.' Her attention had suddenly departed from Ann, as if there were someone else she had to convince. But when her attention came back to Ann again, she explained that she had just sold a batch of her special
cassoulet
to an embassy in the neighborhood and
her
pate
was becoming a staple at the French Market.

'It's just a humble beginning,' she had sai
d. 'But that's why I need a littl
e help with the kids. Just a watchful eye. A little tidying up. Perhaps some help for me. Nothing heavy. A maid comes in to do the hard stuff. Teenagers need a maternal surrogate when Mom's busy in the kitchen.' She laughed nervously, which, by inference, put Ann at ease, as if illustrating that she wasn't the only one with anxieties about the new arrangement.

As she talked, Ann remembered, she had lifted Mercedes, the spayed Siamese, from one of the upper open shelves, wedged between a can of Crisco and a box of brown sugar. The cat snuggled against her hair and briefly shared an Eskimo kiss before jumping to the floor, scurrying off to a sunny adjoining room that appeared to be filled with plants.

'There's an overgrown standard schnauzer, whose bark is worse than his bite, that you'll meet shortly. He spends the day servicing the local bitches. Mostly, he obeys only Oliver, who says that's because they both share the same drives.' She had flashed her smile again and giggled a throaty, girlish laugh. The reference to men's drives seemed to offer a female bond, and from that moment, sisterly affection began to ferment. Ann's confidence rose. The
little
exchange seemed to underline that first impression.

Barbara had menti
oned in passing that the schnau
zer's name was Benny, but it was Eve, their sixteen-year-old daughter, who had explained to Ann the not-so-subtle connection.

'Mercedes-Benz. Of course. I should have caught it immediately.' Ann had actually felt embarrassed.

'No reason to, Ann, really. It's just one of those very inside family things. It was Dad's idea.'

Reticence marked their first encounters. But Ann thought that was understandable, since the assignment of an
au pair
girl to watch over a sixteen-year-old seemed an insult by definition. Eve's first move was to give Ann the shock treatment.

'I keep my stash of pot behind Louisa May Alcott,' the girl explained as she introduced Ann to her room, the style of which was an obviously deliberate attempt on Eve's part to stem the tide of antiques that had engulfed the house. Every piece in it seemed ruffled with flowery prints except for the pink bookcase and Andy Gibb poster. The inside of the closet was a mess and schoolbooks were scattered under the bed.

'And I'm on the pill,' she said, watching Ann's face for a reaction. Ann's features were calculatingly immobile. She herself wasn't on the pill for two reasons, health and infrequency. She wasn't shocked, although she had made a mental note as to how much lower the starting age was now.

As if to buttress her rebel image, Eve offered Ann a cigarette, then lit up and inhaled deeply.

'Screw cancer.' She shrugged. To Ann, the bravado was a dead giveaway. Eve wasn't a brat at all. Just unsure, like most teenagers
...
and adults.

'I don't smoke,' Ann had replied. T chew.'

Eve's giggle, like her mother's, seemed to break the tension.

'Really?' Eve had exclaimed, showing her age.

She was, Ann observed, vulnerable and gawky, still unfleshed and willowy, but with all the promise of inheriting her mother's Slavic sensuousness. With her father's blue eyes and rich, thick hair, she would soon be quite a beauty.