The House on Coliseum Street Read online

  That wasn’t it, she thought. It took a turn the wrong way and went off where I didn’t want it to go, and I can’t bring it back. Where was it? It was there. Somewhere. And I lost it.

  He was speaking to her, still teasing. “Of course I might worry about your gambling.”

  She finished her brandy, and twirled the empty glass. The barman came over and she pushed it to him. Fred nodded to him.

  “Why do you suppose,” Joan said, “that I can’t gamble?”

  “I don’t know. Any ideas?”

  “Maybe because my father was a gambler.”

  “Now you’ve gone Freudian on me.”

  “Did you ever know my father?”

  “That’s a funny thing to ask.”

  “Did you?”

  “I met him, of course. Long before I knew you.”

  “How? How did you meet him?”

  “We had business,” Fred said. “When he was selling that big LaChaise tract out by the lake.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “After all,” he said, “you couldn’t be around downtown very much and not run into him.”

  “I never saw him downtown,” she said.

  “He was sort of all over the place. I can still see him rushing off down the corridor, with his heels going like drums on the marble.”

  “I never saw him there,” she repeated; “I only used to see him when I went across the Tickfaw on week ends and holidays.”

  “It’s nicer over there,” Fred suggested gently, “than downtown.”

  “I still wish he’d let me come down.”

  She was beginning to feel very sad. Fred reached over and touched her shoulder. “Come on, Sarah Bernhardt,” he said, “don’t cry in your beer.”

  “Let’s go dance somewhere.”

  “You’re going home.”

  “This early?”

  “You, my dear, are drunk.”

  “Hell,” she said softly.

  Even so, she was glad of his hand on her arm as they walked out. She held herself very stiff and proper and took one step at a time, not too slowly, but very carefully. The attendant at the parking lot was asleep in his lighted shack that looked for all the world like a phone booth.

  “Wait.” Fred tiptoed over and lifted his keys off the hooked board.

  She was conscious that she was swaying very slightly when he came back. “Let the poor bastard sleep,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t have done that,” she said. “When it’s his job and all.”

  “That’s because you’re basically mean and cruel.”

  “No,” she said, “it’s because the gravel is hurting my shoes.”

  He chuckled and, slipping an arm around her waist, steadied her along.

  As they turned out of the lot, she said, “Let’s put the top down.”

  “This, young lady, is not a convertible.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I forgot. I thought you had a convertible.”

  “You are drunk.”

  She leaned back against the seat. He reached over and pulled her along the slick surface until she sat next to him. He swung one arm over her shoulder and pulled her still tighter.

  “I am, sort of,” she said. “I always know I am when I start talking about my father.”

  “And what’s so strange about that?”

  “Because I hardly ever saw him,” she said.

  “And that’s exactly why.”

  She sighed. “Things are so simple for you.”

  “Maybe,” he said, “things are just simple. Period.”

  She stopped trying to think and settled down to watch the lights go swimming past the windshield. A splatter of red and green. Then black. Then faint yellow, and more red and green.

  “There’s a moon,” he said; “want to go out to the lake and neck?”

  She nodded. He did not answer, but she was conscious now that he drove faster.

  “It’s an old moon,” she said.

  “What did you expect, this time of month, this time of night?”

  “I guess I don’t know the date, or the time either.”

  “Well, mercy sakes,” he mimicked, “my little drunken friend.”

  “I wish I had a drink right now.”

  “You don’t need it.”

  “I bet you’ve got some right in the glove compartment.”

  “Bet I do too.”

  “If you only had ice.”

  “I’ll put in a refrigerator just for you.”

  “I want a drink.”

  “In a while, if you’re a good little girl I’ll give you one.”

  She stopped listening then and gave herself up to the long swooping rolls of her desire. Fred talked on. She could hear him from a great distance. At first she had tried to listen, to understand him. That had been months ago. Then she realized she didn’t have to. He talked, joked even, from the time he switched off the car engine until the instant of his shuddering climax. Then after a brief interval, he began again.

  She rather liked it. It was like having the radio on. It was soothing.

  She heard the silence, she let herself drift on waves of alcohol and pleasure.

  “You have been a good little girl,” he said finally. “And like a gentleman I’ll get you a drink.”

  He leaned over across the front seat, got the pint and the two shot glasses.

  “Doesn’t even burn,” Joan said.

  “Old Forester.”

  “You did want to make it a special evening.”

  “Did I?”

  “The roses, and the whole thing seemed kind of that way.”

  “Maybe,” he said quietly, “when I get to see you these days it seems like a holiday.”

  If she had said something then, it would have been all right. It would have been the way it was before. She knew it and she tried to think what to say. But her liquor-fogged mind moved slowly, and the words formed slowly: I won’t work evenings any more, if you don’t want me to. And I would also like to get married.

  She delayed too long. She found exactly the right words but didn’t get to use them.

  He was mocking, lightly, with a change of mood: “Of course I know the library couldn’t run without you.”

  “I like to work,” she said faintly; “it keeps the summer from being boring.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “Just that you want to do something different sometimes, not for any reason.”

  “To keep the summer from being so boring.”

  “Oh quit,” she said wearily, “quit.”

  Aurelie stirred in her big four-poster, opened her eyes and stared up at the lace canopy that glowed faintly in the little crack of light from the hall. She heard it again, a second car door. Of course. They would be coming home, one of her two girls.

  She got up and went to the window, lifting the corner of the shade gently, and peeped out. She recognized Joan’s stocky figure, and then the street light fell on Fred’s heavy handsome head.

  A nice looking man, she thought, automatically. And then a second thought crossed her mind.

  But she went back to bed. After a few minutes, she heard the front door slam, and then Joan’s uncertain feet on the stairs. She’s drunk, Aurelie thought with considerable distaste.

  She seemed to have reached the top of the stairs. Aurelie could hear her stop for breath, trying to decide which way her room was. A soft thud of something light dropping, and then the steps shuffled off across the bare wood. Another stop and shoes were kicked off; one knocked into a wall, and Aurelie jumped. A door opened, too hard, and smacked into the wainscoting.

  Aurelie sighed and got up. Since the house was very hot, she did not bother putting on a robe. The feel of the nylon nightgown drifting between her legs was vaguely pleasant.

  As she expected, there were shoes in the hall, and a chiffon scarf, and over by the stairs, a purse had been dropped. She sighed again. The door to Joan’s room was open and the little night light was burning. She stepped inside, knowing
that she needn’t bother being particularly quiet. Joan was sprawled face down crosswise on the bed, her feet still touching the floor. She was fully dressed.

  Aurelie sighed again. Joan was the sloppy child. No matter how tired or drunk Doris was, she always managed to hang her clothes in the closet, including the time she had come home from a party after an accident with a bottle and her left hand sliced almost off, with eighteen stitches and a great wad of bandages.

  Aurelie bent over and began undoing the back zipper. Joan did not move. When the dress and bra were opened, Aurelie shook her shoulder firmly. “Get up,” she said.

  Joan stirred vaguely. Aurelie pulled her to a sitting position—not gently—and dragged the dress over her head. She shook her again. “Now finish up yourself.”

  Joan stumbled out of her clothes. Aurelie held out a pajama coat. Some telltale stains and a certain odor—Aurelie wondered why she had had nothing but daughters.

  “Joan,” she said, “listen to me now. Are you being careful?”

  “Huh?”

  “Are you being careful, you heard me.”

  “Sure,” Joan said. “I’m being careful and Fred’s being careful too.”

  Aurelie let her slip back, and Joan was asleep before she touched the pillow.

  Aurelie hung up the dress and left, closing the door firmly. She stepped over the shoes and the scarf on the hall floor. But she stopped by the purse, picked it up, and emptied its contents out on the little hall table. She blew into it carefully to remove the last speck of powder. Then took it back to her room. After all, it had only been borrowed, she remembered. It belonged to her.

  THE SUNDAY THAT FOLLOWED was a particularly bad day. The first bit of light was just beginning to show when Aurelie came back from Joan’s room, tossed the little purse to her dressing table, and went over to the window. She pulled aside the curtains, the embroidered organdy curtains that were her special delight, and opened the shade. The window was high and looked directly into the big camphor tree, so she could see nothing of the ground, just the leaves and the sky above.

  The air was very still, and almost cool. The odors of night jasmine and sweet olive had gotten all mixed up. They hung heavy and thick like streaks in the still air, or like incense at a funeral. The sky overhead was the strange color that comes just before light, a faint green. There didn’t seem to be any traffic moving, even over on the avenue. It was very quiet, only the steady gurgling of the little fountain in the front yard and one sleepy confused squawk from a mockingbird.

  Aurelie heard a sound she did not like—the stealthy shifting of furniture upstairs. The last time she had heard that … No, she told herself firmly, that would not happen again.

  She wondered briefly if she should go investigate Herbert’s doings. But the stairs seemed so steep… She went back to bed.

  She had just slipped off to sleep when she heard Doris come home: the slamming of doors and then Doris herself stumbling along, singing at the top of her voice.

  Girls, she thought, all girls. At least the other three aren’t home.

  And she went to sleep. Soundly, this time, black and dreamless.

  At seven o’clock her phone, the little ivory-colored one with its unlisted number, began to ring. She glared at it for a bit before answering.

  She listened patiently, said, “Yes, of course,” and hung up.

  Doris popped her head around the door. She was dressed in the inevitable white shorts and shirt and tennis shoes. “Who’s getting you up so early in the morning?”

  Aurelie looked at her with a mixture of annoyance and interest. “Child,” she asked, “when do you sleep?”

  “Don’t,” Doris giggled.

  Aurelie sighed again. “Your sister.”

  “Only young once, little mother,” Doris mimicked. “Who called you?”

  Aurelie sighed again. “Your sister.”

  “Which one?” Doris said with a smirk, “I’ve got quite a few.”

  “Celine.”

  “What’s the little bastard got into this time?”

  “Honestly, child, that is no way to talk at all. She is a perfectly nice girl…”

  “Okay. What happened to her?”

  “She got into poison ivy.”

  “At Camp what-do-you-call-it?”

  “Owahkishmewah. She has a bad case, in her ears and under her eyelids.”

  “Gee,” Doris said with her bright white grin, “what fun for the little monster.”

  “They called because they wanted to check before sending her in to the hospital at Willis Point.”

  “My, my,” Doris said cheerily, “she must be near crazy.”

  Aurelie closed her eyes and settled down against the pillows.

  “Don’t go to sleep,” Doris said, “I’ve got more news for you.”

  Aurelie’s large yellow-brown eyes slipped open again. “You must have a remarkable liver,” she said quietly. “You were drunk last night.”

  “It’s about Papa Herbert.”

  Aurelie sat up abruptly, remembering the sounds of moving furniture she had heard hours earlier. “What?”

  “When Clara came in for breakfast about ten minutes ago, she found him sitting out in the back yard.”

  He had been sitting very quietly in the far corner of the yard, where the high board fence was almost covered with fragrant panicles of the tiny-flowered star jasmine. He was sitting quietly on a little white-painted iron bench; he was smoking cigarettes and he was naked.

  “Oh God,” Aurelie said.

  “Clara’s got a robe on him now.”

  “Oh,” Aurelie said. “Oh, oh, oh.”

  “Seems they’re after him.”

  “Who?”

  “The feather merchants.”

  “Again,” Aurelie said. “Oh not again.”

  “I’ve been talking to him,” Doris said, “and do you want to hear the whole story?”

  “Again,” Aurelie repeated wearily. “I ought to have gone up there last night.”

  “He says he can’t come in because his rooms are full of the feather merchants, but luckily he was able to trick them and slip on out and leave them locked in up there.”

  “Oh dear,” Aurelie said, “oh dear.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Doris lifted one eyebrow, “they’re locked in the bathroom, if you want to know where they are, and he’s piled all the furniture in front of the bathroom door to keep them in.”

  Aurelie rolled over and picked up the phone. “Tell Clara to stay there and I’ll call for them to come get him.”

  “Tell that nice handsome Dr. Paul hello for me,” Doris said.

  “Don’t sound like a nymphomaniac.”

  “He is handsome, looks just the way a psychiatrist should look.”

  Aurelie made the call quickly. There was nothing to arrange. It had all happened before. When she was finished, Aurelie stared into the phone she still held in her hand. “That does it,” she said softly. Doris started at the change of tone. The grin slipped off her face.

  Aurelie continued. “This is the last time. When he comes out of the hospital this time, he does not come back here.”

  The surprise passed. Doris was grinning again. “Well, farewell Papa Herbert.”

  “Hand me the note pad, child,” Aurelie wrote a quick line.

  “What’s that?”

  “Cousin William. I must call him the very first thing Monday morning.”

  “Divorce?”

  “My dear child,” Aurelie said, “I have put up with a great many years of this—far more than I have ever done with any man.”

  “He’s been around so long,” Doris said, “I thought he was permanent or something.”

  “Child,” Aurelie said, “go to the bathroom and get me three aspirins and a glass of water.”

  She swallowed them. “So many years …”

  “He’s the helpless type,” Doris said, “brought out the mother in you.”

  “Go away,” Aurelie said.


  When she left, Aurelie got up and turned the key in her lock, made herself go back to bed, stretch out under the sheet and close her eyes, pretending, even to herself, that she was asleep.

  Aurelie was still in bed, Doris had gone, and Joan wasn’t awake when Dr. Paul and two orderlies came by and picked up Mr. Herbert. There was a little procession of them, the four of them, Indian-fashion, from the kitchen where Mr. Herbert had been waiting (he had been having a beer with Clara; he carried the glass carefully in his left hand; his right was busily giving a crisp parade salute), through the hall and out of the front door.

  The two orderlies were unnecessary. It was just something the hospital insisted on sending. Mr. Herbert Norton went with them, meek as could be. After all, in his entire life he had never made a fuss, he was always such a perfect gentleman. And he even seemed rather glad to be leaving.

  JUNE GROUND ALONG. In its last weeks, the sun got hotter and the sky turned a pale blue. Tremendous domed thunderheads with black underbellies sailed over almost every afternoon, dropped their loads of water in drenching downpours. Cars caught in the worst of those rains simply pulled over and stopped and waited. There were almost no pedestrians out—there was no staying dry in that kind of rain. Drops ricocheted off pavements and soaked clothes under raincoats; streets flooded knee-deep in a few minutes. Most people simply stayed wherever they happened to be during the afternoons. After all, it never rained before noon or after four.

  When the clouds moved off and the sun came out, the leaves and pavements and houses shone fiercely, almost as if they were washed in oil. The air itself glittered with the bright clear sharp odor of ozone, left briefly from the violent lightning barrage. In half an hour or so all the wet surfaces began to steam, and the air turned dense and heavy, like the air in a greenhouse. And in the gardens the paper plants and the ginger lilies and the crinums almost visibly unfolded their waxy flowers.

  The house on Coliseum Street drowsed behind its closed shutters (to keep out the rain) and its permanently opened windows. (Its high ceilings and echoing halls and leaky windows made it impossible to air-condition.) Aurelie got out her summer rugs of woven straw and her cotton slip covers. And she brought in her ferns and her potted violets.

  “Place not only looks like a funeral parlor,” Doris said, “it smells like one.”