The Evening Star Page 6

  Aurora had been polishing her rings on a napkin as Rosie and the General exchanged tidbits of speculation about what might happen in the trouble spots of the world. This happened every evening now, so regularly, indeed, monotonously, that she had almost come to regret her decision to install Rosie as the permanent occupant of the guest house in the backyard.

  True, her decision had rescued Rosie from the violent Denver Harbor neighborhood where she had survived by dint of tooth and claw for most of her adult life; but the downside meant having her dinner table turned into a political-science seminar run by her maid and her boyfriend.

  She was about to deliver herself of a blunt comment notifying them as to what they could do with China, not to mention Lithuania, when the doorbell rang.

  “Thank God, it’s my date, just when I need him most,” she said, brightening. “Last chance for walnut cake.”

  The General, considering how best to employ his double six, ignored her remark about the date, but hastily whacked himself off another piece of cake. The second he did, Aurora took the plate and headed downstairs.

  “I don’t know why I put up with this,” he said, once he felt sure Aurora was out of hearing distance. “It’s your move, Rosie.”

  “Granny’s just a big flirt,” Melanie said. “She really loves you best.”

  The General chuckled. He was well aware that both Melanie and Rosie gave him a lot of credit for tolerating Aurora’s willful ways.

  “If she loves me best, God help the rest of them,” he said. “Play, Rosie. You’re the only person I know who has to use a calculator to play dominoes.”

  “Its batteries are about to go, that’s why it’s flickering,” Rosie said. “I skipped third grade, that’s probably why I’m no good at addition.”

  Melanie yawned. She thought she might go by Teddy’s for a while. The apartment where he and Jane lived was only a few blocks from her own apartment. Teddy and Jane were always up, studying Sanskrit or some other language.

  Aurora had prepared a little snack for Pascal—a pear, a mango, some of the walnut cake, a little Camembert, and a half-bottle of Burgundy. She set it out on a small table in her downstairs study before bothering to go to the door to let Pascal in. Over the years she had found it best to let Pascal settle his nerves for a few minutes before letting him in—otherwise he might jump at her in his eagerness to show affection. He was a mere five four, and when agitated displayed something of the jumpy character of a small French dog.

  Pascal Ferney, waiting with increasing discouragement just outside the door, wondered if this would be the night when Aurora wouldn’t let him in at all. With any other woman he would have been ringing the doorbell furiously every few seconds, but he had done that once, in his early days, and Aurora had responded with a fury so violent that ever since he had had to screw up his courage to a high pitch before even ringing the doorbell once. What if he pushed too hard and the doorbell became stuck? What would she do then?

  “Goodness, Pascal, just in time,” Aurora said, opening the door and giving him a hug in one smooth motion. Hugging him immediately was also likely to reduce the likelihood of his jumping at her. Looking over his head, she noticed that, as usual, he had left the lights of his small crumpled Peugeot blazing brightly.

  “Am I late or early?” Pascal asked. “I lose all sense of time when I visit you.”

  “You’re more or less on schedule, but once again you’ve left your lights on,” Aurora said. “I do hope they aren’t stuck. I wish you would remember to turn them off, Pascal. The rest of humanity remembers to turn their lights off, and I’m sure you could, too, if you concentrate. My reputation will suffer, if it hasn’t already, if my lovers insist on coming over here and leaving every light blazing.”

  “Oh, merde!” Pascal said—it irked him that once again he had forgotten to turn off his lights. He raced across the lawn, whacked them off, and slammed the car door violently. Then he raced back across the lawn and arrived again at Aurora’s side. Encouraged by the fact that she had moved him, at least conversationally, into the category of lover, he tried to resume their hug, but with no success. Aurora merely caught his arm and ushered him inside.

  “I lose all sense of time when I visit you,” Pascal repeated. He was a little breathless from his double dash across the lawn.

  “I lose all sense of everything when I visit you,” he added. “Everything becomes—topsy-turkey, is that correct?”

  “Topsy-turvy,” Aurora corrected, amused. For all his faults, Pascal had a twinkle, and some resilience; slapped down a million times, he would still come twinkling back, and she had never been able to entirely resist men who managed to twinkle, General Scott, on the other hand, had yet to twinkle his first twinkle—or, at least, his first in her company. She had upbraided him for this inability many times, but to no avail.

  Aurora kept a firm grip on Pascal’s arm until she had him firmly installed in the study—if left to roam unchecked, Pascal was apt to dart upstairs for a minute in a misguided attempt to be sociable. Once there he was apt to burst out with niceties which were more or less the moral equivalent of “Vive la France!” His sudden appearances startled both Hector and Rosie, neither of whom ever knew what to say. Once, in a moment of embarrassment, Rosie asked him to join them in a domino game, an invitation that ruined everyone’s evening. Pascal had chattered so that neither the General nor Rosie nor her calculator could add accurately, causing the General to lose his temper and stomp off to bed. That, of course, had been back in the days when he could stomp.

  “What do they do up there?” Pascal asked, glancing hastily upstairs as Aurora marched him along.

  “Oh, don’t mind them, you know how serious they are,” Aurora said. “They’re sorting out the fate of Lithuania, or perhaps Lebanon.”

  “They should talk to me then,” Pascal said. “I was once in Vilnius for three years.”

  “I don’t want to hear the word Lithuania out of you tonight, Pascal,” Aurora informed him. “If I hear it again you’re out on your ear. Sit yourself down and eat this food. I’d like to hear some gossip about Madame Mitterrand, if you have any, and if you don’t, then how about some gossip about Catherine Deneuve?”

  “Madame Mitterrand is very serious,” Pascal said cautiously. He had a sense that this was one of those times when he had better be careful. He had better try to say what Aurora wanted to hear, and yet he had no idea what that might be.

  “I don’t know if Catherine Deneuve is so serious,” he added.

  “You are from France, after all, Pascal,” Aurora said. “What makes you think I care whether they’re serious or not? Who are they sleeping with? Who is anybody sleeping with? Here I sit, dying for a little gossip, and you won’t give me any. I guess it’s not as easy to be a lewd old woman as I’d always hoped it would be.”

  Pascal was so startled that he almost dropped his pear. Aurora had a reckless look in her eye. She wanted to talk about movie stars or presidents’ wives sleeping with people. She had even suggested that she wouldn’t mind being a lewd old woman. Could she be doing what Americans called “coming on”?

  Watching her closely, Pascal decided that that was exactly what was happening—why had he been surprised? His lifelong assumption, borne out many times, was that all women wanted him: Aurora had just taken longer than most to let him know it. He took a sip of wine and grasped her hand. He expected that this first sally might be rebuffed, but it wasn’t. Aurora let him keep holding her hand.

  “If you want to be lewd we should be upstairs,” Pascal said, smiling. “They should be downstairs—people can talk about Lithuania anywhere. Upstairs we could be lewd all night.”

  “All night, at your age?” Aurora said, aware that two of her suitor’s appetites had just come in conflict with each other. Pascal was trying to finish his Camembert while keeping a firm grip on her hand—rather too firm a grip, in fact, if seduction was his purpose. She felt an old restlessness take her—it was no doubt quite immoral for her
to lead this little man on, but she was doing it anyway, as she had many times in her life, with men small or large, just to see what would happen. Would Pascal Ferney at last fight his way through her taunts, or would he retreat to cheese and wine?

  “If we were upstairs you’d be surprised,” Pascal said. “Not all of me is old.”

  “Not all of me is dumb, either,” Aurora said. “As you correctly point out, people can talk of Lithuania anywhere, but I don’t believe that’s the only thing that can be done anywhere. In my youth I knew people who were capable of committing lewd behavior in a quite surprising variety of places. In fact, I rather frequently found myself doing that sort of thing too—all over the house, or even out-of-doors, if the mood took me. If you don’t mind my saying so, Pascal, the notion that carnal actions of a lengthy duration can only occur in a bedroom on the second floor of my house is rather un-Gallic, is it not? Somehow I had imbibed the myth that the French can do it anywhere, anytime. What a pity it’s only a myth.”

  Pascal was thunderstruck. Convinced as he was that all women did want him, and want him a lot, he could scarcely believe his ears. This woman, who had never given him more than a kiss and a squeeze now and then, was accusing him of being too conventional in his approach to sex.

  “Besides that, we’re not arm wrestling,” she said, before he could collect his thoughts. “Stop squeezing my hand so hard. Having my fingers crushed is not my idea of foreplay.”

  Pascal turned red in the face, dropped her hand, then immediately tried to take it again. Aurora jerked it away. Pascal had been about to take a swallow of wine, but the jerk caused it to slosh out of his glass and splash his tie. All the while, Aurora was looking at him in a reckless way, a way that he had not seen her look before. He felt a coward—she was making him feel a coward with her reckless look.

  “Pascal, you seem to be falling apart before my very eyes,” Aurora said. Her demon was out, and she was in a mood to destroy him utterly, since nothing else was happening. “Now you’ve managed to waste my wine and ruin your tie in the same motion. Isn’t that the tie I bought you in Paris?”

  Pascal jumped up in a fury. “I’ll throw you on the couch!” he said. “You’ll see what happens then.”

  “Pooh, sticks and stones,” Aurora said. “I don’t believe you’ll throw me anywhere, or do anything else very interesting, either.”

  Pascal felt a blind rage coming over him. He rushed around the table, meaning to grab Aurora by the throat and still her merciless tongue forever. He did grab her by the throat, but before he could get on with the business of strangling her a young voice at his elbow said, “Hey, what do you think you’re doing? You behave, Pascal.”

  To his horror he saw Melanie standing at his elbow, holding a silver soup tureen.

  He immediately took his hands off Aurora’s throat.

  “Oh, mademoiselle, thank God you came,” he said. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “You certainly did know what you were doing—you meant to strangle me,” Aurora said, rubbing her neck. On the whole she felt rather pleased with how things had gone. She lifted her eyebrows and grinned at Melanie.

  “Oh, no, no, it was just a fit,” Pascal said meekly. “It was amour fou.”

  “You needn’t explain to my granddaughter,” Aurora said. “She knows what brutes men are—she was just cruelly beaten by one herself, scarcely an hour ago.”

  “Oh, Granny,” Melanie said, “I wasn’t cruelly beaten, I was just shoved over a chair. What did you do to make Pascal so mad?”

  “The same thing she always does!” Pascal exclaimed. “Taunts—she only taunts me. She doesn’t mean a word. I love her, but so what, as you kids say.”

  “It’s just that my demon got loose and decided to make a snack of this unwary Frenchman,” Aurora said. “Pascal, that’s excellent cake—I think we might just table the passion question for a bit. I suggest you go to the bathroom and run a little cold water over that tie you just soaked in wine. If you want to soak your head at the same time, that’s no business of mine, but in my view it wouldn’t hurt you. Then come back and eat your cake.”

  Too embarrassed to argue, Pascal trundled off.

  “My God, Granny, what was that all about?” Melanie asked. She knew life was full of surprises, but she had never expected to come downstairs and find her grandmother being strangled in the study.

  “Just a contretemps, a very small one,” Aurora said. She reached across the table and took what was left of Pascal’s wine. “I was just trying to get him to make love to me on the couch. In my heyday I was made love to a great many times on couches, and I suppose I had in mind to try it once more. Unfortunately, Pascal chose to strangle me instead.”

  She took a sip of wine. Now that her anger had passed she was feeling a little discouraged.

  “It’s a lesson you should take to heart,” she said, looking at her chubby granddaughter.

  “What lesson?” Melanie asked. She was stunned by the thought that her grandmother had apparently been willing to fuck Pascal on the couch in her study. She knew her granny was eccentric, but she had never supposed she would do anything that eccentric.

  “Given the option, men will frequently try to murder you rather than make love,” Aurora said. “There are exceptions, but not too many.”

  “Granny!” Melanie said, again. “You were going to do it on that couch, with Pascal? What if the General had come downstairs and caught you?”

  “I would have been very angry,” Aurora said. “Hector knows me well enough to realize that there are times when he should leave me well enough alone. It points to another lesson, which is that it’s unwise to incarcerate yourself with a man nearly fifteen years your senior. I’ve done it and now I’ll have to make the best of it—for all I know Pascal may be the best of it, too.

  “Chew on that for a while,” she said in a lighter tone. She noticed that her granddaughter was struggling to assimilate some rather shocking information.

  “I’ll chew on it for years,” Melanie said, as Pascal came back into the room. He looked disconsolate, and his tie was dripping wet.

  “I can’t believe it,” Aurora said. “When I directed you to run cold water on your tie I naturally assumed you’d take it off first. I thought you French were supposed to have savoir faire. What happened to yours, dear?”

  “It has been a strange evening,” Pascal said. “At this moment I am not myself.”

  He sat down and began to apply himself to his walnut cake.

  Melanie took the soup tureen to the kitchen. She came back to the study for a moment, gave her granny a kiss, and left. She could hardly wait to tell Teddy and Jane what she had just witnessed—talk about blowing their minds!

  “Good night, dear,” Aurora said. “Remember little Andy and try not to smoke.”

  Pascal ate his cake in silence while his tie dripped on his pants. Aurora was watching him quietly—she did not seem to be angry, but then she had not seemed to be angry when he arrived, either, and yet within ten minutes she had goaded him into a violent act.

  “What’s the matter with you now?” Aurora asked. “I hope you aren’t preparing to sulk or weep or produce any other manifestations I’m not in the mood for.”

  “Why can’t you come to my apartment?” Pascal asked. “In my apartment there would be nobody but us.”

  “That’s quite true,” Aurora said, smiling at him. “On the other hand, if I were in your apartment, I might faint from the stench and the squalor. You must admit that you seem to lack housekeeping skills along with savoir faire and various other things.

  “Though perhaps that’s what you want,” she added, kicking him lightly under the table. “You want me to faint. Then you’d have a passive body to work your will on. But that’s not the way it’s going to happen, if it happens.”

  “I want it to happen!” Pascal exclaimed. “I want it to happen.”

  “Well, if it should, keep in mind that this is not a passive body that you’re lo
oking at,” Aurora said. “Nobody’s getting any fun unless I get some too.”

  “I will get a housekeeper,” Pascal declared. He lived in a tiny studio apartment near the zoo. The fact was that he had allowed it to become rather grubby over the years. The one time Aurora had visited it she had held her nose the whole time. It was hard to seduce a woman who was resolutely holding her nose.

  “I will make it spotless! Spotless!” he declared—his soon-to-be-hired housekeeper would make the house spotless, and Aurora would come. He felt better just thinking about it and reached for the wine bottle.

  “You’ll see,” he said. “I’ll even buy new sheets. You’ll see.”

  “New sheets, Pascal?” Aurora said. “I hardly know if I deserve quite that much savoir faire.”

  He was still talking about his housekeeper and his soon-to-be-spotless apartment when she tucked him into his Peugeot and sent him home.

  7

  Teddy and Jane met when they were both patients at a psychiatric hospital in Galveston. Soon after they fell in love, both were released from the psychiatric hospital—on the same day, in fact. They felt it was a happy omen and for some months they weighed the question of marriage before deciding against it. Then they weighed the even weightier question of children and decided they wanted one—or possibly two. Roughly a year after they took the second decision, Jonathan arrived. Jonathan was now nearly two and had yet to speak—or, to be more accurate, had yet to speak in English. One of the things that convinced Teddy and Jane that they were perfect for one another was that both had been majoring in classical languages when they began to go wrong in their heads. Jane had been at Bryn Mawr, Teddy at the University of Texas. Jane’s parents and Teddy’s grandparents both lived in Houston, and that was where they had retreated when they dropped out. After a few months of getting crazier and crazier, they had both agreed to be admitted to the hospital in Galveston.