The House on Coliseum Street Read online

  Aurelie was jealous. It was part of a lady’s life, this gardening; and it was a part she was missing. When she got home she had promptly ordered a set of copper gardening tools from Hammacher Schlemmer. They arrived a week later and the box, unopened, had been lying on top of the refrigerator in the kitchen.

  This morning, passing it, she knew she could no longer put it off. So she got out her gardening outfit—white shirt and full-skirted denim jumper. It smelled faintly musty because it had not been used since last year—but the air would soon take care of that.

  She looked over the garden. With the shiny new tools in her hand, she surveyed the handkerchief-sized back yard, the narrow strips on each side of the house, wide enough only for a brick walk and ribbon-sized edging beds. She selected the east side finally, because it was shady. Settling herself on her little gardening stool, and giving her hair one final clean-handed pat, she began grubbing around the roots of the blue hydrangeas and the violets.

  Joan came back from the drugstore, walking slowly in the noon sun. Her starched dress was beginning to wilt and there were dark splotches of perspiration across her back. Her petticoat stuck to her legs and she yanked at it as she entered the house. She stopped in the kitchen, grunting good morning to Clara. She found an orange and ate it, sucking it through a hole in the skin with loud noises.

  Clara kept silent until she was almost finished. Then she said: “You mother hear you, and she go right through the roof.”

  “I’m a grown woman,” she said, “not a child.”

  Clara shrugged patiently, “Okay, woman-grown.”

  Joan finished and tossed the skin into the garbage pail. “Where is my mother?”

  Clara grinned secretly out the kitchen window. “Gardening.”

  “Where?”

  “Outside. Where else you find mud?”

  Joan slammed the screen door behind her. She heard the steady chink chink of the trowel and followed it to the east side of the house. Aurelie did not look up. She kept right on jabbing the trowel into the wet earth.

  “Such pretty tools,” Joan said finally, “seems a shame to get them dirty.”

  “Just hold them under the faucet,” Aurelie said in time with her jabs, “and they will be good as new.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Joan said, “they’d look kind of pretty sitting alongside a window garden. You know—herbs or something like that.”

  “An herb garden.” Aurelie studied her own right hand, which kept moving up and down of its own accord. “I’ve never thought of that.”

  “You just sliced up a worm.”

  Aurelie glanced down. “Nasty things.”

  “I’ve got to talk to you,” Joan said.

  “Won’t it wait until lunch?”

  “No,” Joan said.

  “Oh child of my heart, everything will wait a few hours.”

  “I’ve got to do something,” Joan said, “and I don’t know what to do.”

  “Nonsense,” Aurelie said, “young people always know what to do.”

  “There are a couple of things I could do,” Joan said, “and I want to know which one.”

  “There’s another worm,” Aurelie said, “dear me, the ground must be full of them.”

  “It’s the violets,” Joan said. “They’re always around violets.” She added: “I’m pregnant.”

  The little trowel stopped jabbing. Aurelie looked up. “Are you saying you’ve eloped?”

  “No,” Joan said. A hummingbird swooped into the narrow passage, was frightened by their figures, and swooped out frantically.

  “You’re not secretly married?”

  “No.”

  Aurelie got off her canvas stool, collected her tools, and carried everything into the back yard. She placed the stool neatly in a corner of the kitchen porch, then rinsed the one muddy trowel under the garden faucet. She put the tools carefully away in their rack on the wall, next to the barometer. She took off her gloves and hung them over the railing.

  She started inside, then abruptly turned back and wiped dry the one trowel, polishing it carefully on her skirt. She checked the other tools. They were clean; their copper winked and glistened in the morning sun.

  “All right now,” she said quietly.

  Joan followed her inside, into the little room that served as a study. Aurelie closed the door, firmly. “Is it Fred?”

  “No.”

  “I would prefer not to know then,” Aurelie said.

  “Poor Fred,” Joan thought out loud, “if I told him, he’d probably marry me right away on the chance that it might be his.”

  “There will be none of that,” Aurelie said very firmly.

  “No,” Joan said, “I wasn’t planning that.”

  Aurelie walked over to stare out of the window, even though the shutters were drawn tightly against the hot morning sun. “How long has it been?”

  “Two months,” Joan said, “nearer three, I guess.”

  Aurelie inspected the closed blinds carefully again. I can’t tell from her back, Joan thought, what she’s thinking or feeling. But at least there’s no scene. I knew she wouldn’t make a scene.

  “If it’s that long,” Aurelie said to the window, “something’s got to be done at once.”

  “Yes,” Joan said. “I know that.”

  Aurelie did not seem to hear. “I’ll call Ethel tonight. You can stop there…”

  Joan thought: she always says stop for stay.

  “You haven’t had a vacation,” Aurelie turned around finally, “so you’re going to spend a little time with your aunt.”

  “Yes,” Joan said.

  “It can be done easier at the Pass.”

  Joan leaned one shoulder against the wall. It’s all decided for me, she thought. I knew it would be. “How big do you suppose it is?”

  “I have no idea,” Aurelie said coldly. “Why don’t you go pack a suitcase for a week at the Pass?”

  “Right now?”

  “Tonight’s train,” Aurelie said, “or tomorrow’s.”

  Joan shrugged. “Sure.”

  Aurelie said, “You won’t go trying any homemade remedies, child.”

  “I know,” Joan said, “I don’t particularly want to kill myself.”

  “Thank God,” Aurelie said dryly, “you have a small amount of common sense left.”

  Back in her room, and alone, Joan thought: it should have been more dramatic, somebody should have yelled. It’s so casual, and easy.

  Aurelie stopped by an hour later. “The evening train will be fine. Ethel will meet you.”

  “Thanks,” Joan said. And then: “What will you tell Doris?”

  Aurelie arranged her lips into a straight, patient line. “Why?”

  “I just don’t want her to know.”

  Aurelie kept looking at her. How much could she guess, Joan wondered. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t possibly guess.

  Joan kept her face empty and calm. After a moment Aurelie said: “I don’t see why Doris should be told anything.”

  “She’ll find out.”

  “Oh honestly now,” Aurelie said, “do try to be a little bit sensible. Even now, when it’s rather late for that sort of thing.”

  “She’ll find out,” Joan insisted.

  “Mon Dieu,” Aurelie said. And left.

  To her back and the closing door, Joan said again: “Thanks though. Thanks a lot.”

  She remembered the rest in a kind of daze. She felt curiously left out. Everyone else moved with such purpose. They all knew what they were doing and they didn’t bother to tell her. Looking back, she saw that it reminded her of the school ballet when she had been perverse enough not to learn her steps. Then the stage was filled with people going about their business, whirling about. And she stood, one foot stepping on the other, nervous hands clasping and unclasping behind her back.

  It was rather like that now. She did nothing. People moved about because of her, but not including her.

  She didn’t know what to do. At
first it annoyed her and then she gave up and contented herself with following the hints others gave her. She found she was much happier that way, watching the plot unfold, like an observer.

  She took the three o’clock train. At six she was emerging from the embrace of her great-aunt Ethel—tall, thin, gaunt in her old age, but still striking and with a startling resemblance to Aurelie. “My dear, how well you look,” Ethel said.

  “You don’t change a bit,” echoed Joan.

  And in the car the same 1929 Rolls she had bought fifteen years ago) Ethel said the exact same thing to the chauffeur that she had been saying for years: “Don’t go fast, Peter. We have nothing important to do.”

  How many times had he heard that? Joan wondered. But he probably didn’t even listen any more.

  “It’s been such a long time since you’ve come over,” Ethel said. “It’s been ages.”

  “I know,” Joan said, following her lead obediently. “I’ve missed the Pass.”

  “As soon as we knew you were coming,” Ethel went on, “I had to call up Roger and tell him you’d be here.”

  She had almost forgotten him—a tall thin man, who was in the lumber business somewhere along the coast.

  “And of course,” Ethel went on, “the moment he heard he just begged me to have you save him the Yacht Club Dance. He’s been perishing for a glimpse of you.”

  “Oh yes,” Joan said vaguely.

  “So he’ll pick you up around nine.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Dear, dear, today is Saturday.”

  Joan hedged nervously. “I am sort of tired, though, and I’ve got a slight headache and I really thought I would just curl up early tonight.”

  Ethel’s eyes flashed a warning at her. She had made a mistake. “Oh really, dear, you can’t miss the most important thing of the summer. And I don’t think it will hurt your cold. At least I hope not.”

  So that was it, Joan thought. She was going to be indisposed for a few days with a cold… It would take only a few days, of course. She kept thinking of it as more of a problem than it really was.

  “I’m just dying to go,” she lied aloud, “and I don’t suppose it could do any harm.”

  “As long as you don’t get chilled.”

  And there it is, Joan thought, all fixed for me.

  “I do like to see the young people have fun,” Ethel said. “It reminds me of my youth. You wouldn’t believe it, you youngsters, but I was nineteen once too.”

  “You’re not old,” Joan said, properly.

  “Oh yes I am,” Ethel said piously, “but I love to see young people have fun. I really do, deep down in my heart I do.”

  Joan got in very late that night. As she climbed the stairs to her room she noticed that her legs ached. And they never had before. Her back bothered her too, as if she had been carrying something heavy and had almost strained it.

  And why did she feel this way, she wondered, groggily. There wouldn’t be any weight to the child. Not yet. And there wouldn’t ever be.

  She was sleeping heavily, snoring gently with her mouth half open, when there was a knock on the door. “Go away,” she muttered.

  Her aunt came into the room and shook her shoulder.

  She had to open her eyes. The curtains were still drawn and the room was dim. “What time is it?” she asked stupidly.

  “Almost seven,” Ethel said. She was making it sound like a picnic. The undertones said so clearly: if you don’t hurry you’ll miss the fun.

  “I haven’t had any sleep,” Joan said.

  “You can rest later, dear.”

  Joan blinked her eyes slowly. Her aunt was walking around the room, busily, opening curtains.

  “Your clothes are all ready. Rise and shine!”

  Joan stumbled out of bed, falling over her own feet, stretching endlessly as her joints snapped.

  “Oh dear,” Ethel said. “I do hope you’re not going to be arthritic. Those joints sound suspicious to me.” She handed Joan her clothes, keeping up a line of patter as she did. “We don’t want to keep them waiting. They’ve been so very nice to do things on short notice.”

  Who? Joan thought. For what?

  Then she remembered and there was a little tremor like fear in her stomach. “But today’s Sunday,” she said, “I didn’t think it would be Sunday.”

  “One day’s as good as another,” Ethel said cheerily, handing her a pair of stockings.

  “No,” Joan said, “I’m not going to wear stockings and heels.” She got a pair of sandals from the closet herself.

  There was a wicker basket, like a purse, standing on the dressing table. Joan did not remember seeing it before.

  “You can put a few things in here,” Ethel said.

  “Few what?”

  “Mercy, child,” Ethel said, “brush your hair.”

  I’m not a child, Joan thought fiercely, so stop calling me one. I’m a woman and I’m carrying another generation inside of me. A tiny point of life, a floating point of life.

  But she said nothing. And Ethel did not seem to notice her rigid defensive stance as she went right on calmly packing the little wicker case. It was too full. She had to empty it and start over. Joan stared at her as she filled the bag (more carefully this time) with a bed-jacket Joan had never seen before—she herself didn’t own one—a bottle of make-up, a box of powder, and two lipsticks. She added a small bottle of cologne, unopened. “L’Heure Bleu,” she said, “how I love that myself. Even an old woman like me, I use it all the time.”

  Where did they come from, Joan thought: jacket and perfume. Does she have a special supply for relatives in trouble?

  Ethel closed the basket. “Ready?”

  It was on the tip of Joan’s tongue to say no, but instead she nodded her head. Things seemed more like a play than ever; nothing was going to happen; nothing was real.

  They went down the long halls and the stairway, steep and black and empty. Joan was surprised to see how dark the center of the house was. She had never noticed it before; there had always been lights on before—not too many, just a few well-placed bulbs. Discreet would be the word.

  That thought made her chuckle silently. Ethel really was the soul of discretion. Like having all this arranged early on a Sunday when none of the house staff came on duty till noon.

  The car was parked outside, in the drive, where it always was. Joan giggled again silently when she saw her aunt slip behind the wheel. Ever, ever so discreet.

  Her aunt drove rapidly with a kind of grim concentration. They turned away from the Gulf and headed north. The roads were empty at this hour and Ethel drove very fast.

  I wouldn’t have guessed it, Joan thought. I wouldn’t have thought she’d tear along… And why does she keep Peter to drive for her?

  The seat was hard. Joan shifted uneasily. Ethel noticed that.

  “It isn’t very comfortable, is it, child?” She smiled a grim winter smile without taking her eyes off the road. She dodged a large grey rabbit that crouched in the right lane. “Only the chauffeur and the footman were supposed to sit up here.”

  “Oh,” Joan said.

  They hit a particularly large rut. Joan caught herself with both hands against the dashboard. Ethel slowed down slightly. “Well,” she said, apologizing to no one in particular, “there are some crossroads coming soon and somebody might just be out.”

  It was a foggy morning, warm and close. There were black streaks of mosquitoes too and lots of night bugs were still out: they splattered against the windshield with popping sounds like tiny rocks.

  It did not occur to Joan to ask questions. Not until she was tucked into the high hospital bed with the harsh sheets scratching her body and the unfamiliar bedjacket over her shoulders. It seemed kind of silly then to say to her aunt who was just leaving: how is it done? and, does it hurt? and, when will they do it?

  It seemed so silly to ask that of her aunt whose thin voile-covered body stood patiently by the bed. She had just finished stacking a gr
eat pile of new magazines on the little table. Where had they come from? Joan wondered. She hadn’t noticed them before.

  “Now,” her aunt said matter of factly, “I have to get back in time to have people for lunch. Did we forget anything?”

  “No,” Joan said. “This is just fine.”

  Why didn’t she ask? Not even: how long?

  But she didn’t. And her aunt kissed her on the forehead and went out.

  Joan stared at the wall for awhile and jumped guiltily when a cheery little nurse popped in the door demanding: “How are we doing here?”

  “Fine,” Joan said.

  “Mustn’t get blue,” the little nurse said, “after all there’s nothing to it, nothing to worry about.”

  “I wasn’t worried.”

  “Mustn’t just sit and stare, bad for the nerves and the disposition and it puts wrinkles in the pretty forehead.” The nurse giggled, proud of her own joke. “Look at the pile of lovely magazines.”

  You can have them, Joan started to say. But the nurse only picked up one and opened it at a random page and held it up close to her nose. Joan took it automatically. “That’s better,” the nurse chuckled. “That’s a whole lot better.”

  Joan held a magazine, not reading, but turning a page now and then, in case somebody else should pass through the door. Once—after a few minutes—she laughed out loud. That was when she remembered that she had forgotten to tell Michael. She had forgotten completely.

  And later, drifting off pleasantly enough, she thought of it again—forgot to tell him—and she giggled her way into unconsciousness.

  IT WAS OVER THEN and done with.

  Joan came back to her aunt’s house at Pass Rigaud. The windows were open, and the same steady wind was blowing in from the Gulf and the same locusts were singing in the trees at the first sign of evening.

  The same sound that there had been at another house, a deserted one. With the thick stifling odor of pines in the hot hot sun…

  She remembered that. She kept remembering that. And why do I do it, she thought, when it’s over and finished with?