A House Like A Lotus Part 13

And he had no hesitation in shoving people aside if they got in his way. After all, isn't G.o.d supposed to do whatever he wants?'

That wasn't the way I thought of G.o.d. Or the way I thought Max thought of G.o.d.

She took her fork and spread spoon bread around on her plate. 'I wonder if G.o.d ever feels guilt? The M. A. Horne Hospital is Papa's big guilt offering. Urs sees G.o.d as a benevolent physician. That's a better image than mine. The only way I can get rid of the false image of Papa as G.o.d is to think of the marvels of creation. The theory now is that everything in the universe, all of the galaxies, all of the quanta, everything comes from something as small as the nucleus of an atom. Think of that, of that tiny speck, invisible to the naked eye, opening up like a flower, to become clouds of hydrogen dust, and then stars, and solar systems. That softly opening flower -I visualize a lotus-is a more viable image of G.o.d for me than anything else. I keep the portrait of Papa to remind me that G.o.d is not like him.'

I liked the image of the gently opening lotus. I didn't like the man in the portrait.

Ovid came in with a bottle of wine in a napkin and poured a gla.s.s for Max.

'This will help your appet.i.te, 123.

Miss Maxa. You need Nettie's good spoon bread.' Then he put a very small amount in my gla.s.s and filled it up with water. My talk with Daddy was still clear in my mind. That was plenty for me.

'M.A. and I were only eleven months apart, and were more lite twins than just sisters. Not that we didn't think for ourselves, but there wasn't anything we couldn't tell each other. She was the younger, and when we were four or five years old our mother died-she had a weak heart-and that made us closer than ever. Mama's portrait is the middle of the three across from you.'

I looked at the three gold-framed portraits. The middle, and largest, was of a fragile-looking woman, almost beautiful, but too washed-out to make it. She was not vivid like Max, or translucent, like M.A. in the portrait in the library.

'She looks pretty. But tired.'

Max laughed, not a happy laugh. 'Papa was a tiring man. Our maternal grandfather, our Allaire grandfather, must have been equally tiring. Poor Mama.

Her name was Submit, and her two sisters, in the portraits on either side of her, were Patience and Hope. Which gives you an idea of the frame of mind of our Allaire grandmother. Mama's calling us Minerva Allaire and Maximiliana Sebastiane may have been her way of getting even. She died before we had much chance to know her, but she was affectionate and gentle.'

Ovid came to take away our plates, checking that Max had eaten most of her meal.

Nettie followed him with salad, delicate greens from the Beau Allaire greenhouse.

'Keeping this enormous house with inadequate help killed Mama. I have one wing completely closed off, but while Papa was alive, all the rooms had to be ready at a moment's notice. Papa did not make his business deals on the golf course, he made them here in the oval dining 124.

room, over port.' She paused. 'The portrait's uncannily like him. I don't think the artist realized how accurate he was.'

We sat in silence for a while. Then she said, 'I'm not really a portraitist, but every once in a while there's someone I know I must paint-like you. Ursula's never allowed me to paint her, but she can't stop me from making sketches.'

Nettie came in, bearing creme brulee, which she put in front of Max, beaming.

When she went back to the kitchen, Max laughed, a nice laugh this time.

'Nettie feels she must compete with Urs. Bless Urs. She has to make G.o.dlike decisions all the time, but she has more genuine humility than anyone I've known. She picks up her scalpel and she holds life and death in her hands. No wonder she comes home from the hospital and bakes bread and creates ca.s.seroles and listens to Pachelbel and Vivaldi.' She served me a luscious dish of creme brullee.

'Bless Nettie, too. I'm far better served than I deserve.'

When we had finished dessert, Max suggested we go upstairs again. The fire had died down, and she rebuilt it, then sat on the rug, head on her knees, watching the fat pine take flame. 'As soon as we were old enough, M.A. and I became Papa's hostesses. After Mama died, he got a good housekeeper, but M.A. and I sat with him in the dining room every night, were with "him when he entertained business guests. I think it was expected that eventually we would marry from the guest list. Money tends to marry money. And when Papa snapped his fingers, we did whatever he wanted us to do. He wasn't beyond hitting us if we didn't obey promptly. M.A. was deathly afraid of him. I suppose I was, too, but I pretended I wasn't. I talked back to him, and he liked that. One didn't show fear in front of Papa.'

125 /.

Something in Max willed me to turn from the fire and look into her eyes, grey, like the fog, the silver glints dimmed. She spoke in a low, chill voice. 'Papa was a lecherous old roue. It killed my mother. But she submitted, poor darling, until her heart gave out, living with a man completely unprincipled. He killed M.A., too. He hated women, I think, but he wanted them. All of them. One night when I was away, he ... She got away from him and ran out into the rain, and died of pneumonia. And anguish. I will never forgive him.'

I shuddered. The fog seemed to be creeping into the room. It did not seem like May.

'Sorry, Polly, darling Polly. Hate is a totally destructive emotion, I know that. But I hate him. I hope you will never have cause to hate anyone as I hate Papa. I would like to forgive him, but I don't know how.'

I stole another look at her. Her eyes burned, and I thought she had fever.

'It's extraordinary how I can hate Papa-and at the same time acknowledge that in my youth I wasn't unlike him, completely indiscriminate in my affairs after my marriage broke up. What I did had little connection with love. And then I met Ursula. Blessed Ursula, who loved me and healed me. We have been good for each other. Nouris.h.i.+ng. As your parents nourish each other.'

Max comparing herself and Ursula to my parents? Was that possible?

'Sandy trusted me enough to bring you over to me. I value that trust. I want never to hurt you. And I already have, haven't I? Or vicious gossip has.

People are a.s.suming that because you are very dear to me, you are like me. The world being the way it is, they'd a.s.sume it even if I was straight as a pin.'

'Never mind,' I said clumsily. 'They're stupid.' I 126.

thought of the girls from Mulletville who thought they were better than anybody else. To put themselves up, they had to put other people down.

Max said, 'I love you as I would have loved the daughter I couldn't have. You don't need a mother, you have a fine one. But every adolescent needs someone to talk to, someone to whom she is not biologically bound, and I serve that purpose. We are alike in our interests, you and I, but not in our ways of expressing our s.e.xuality.' She looked straight into my eyes. 'Don't be confused about yourself. You're not a lesbian. I know.'

I suppose, looking back on it, that it was brave, maybe even n.o.ble, of Max to tell me all this.

She took a long bra.s.s wand and blew into the fire. The flames soared. She put the wand back, speaking as though to herself. 'Bad hearts run in the Allaire family. Mama. M.A. My little-' She broke off. 'I have a heart as strong as an ox. What irony.'

I didn't understand the irony.

A sudden crash of thunder cut across my thoughts. Almost daily thunderstorms are part of summer on Benne Seed Island. Five minutes of lightning and thunder and rain and the air would be cleared. This sudden storm would dissipate the fog.

'Your father and Urs are friends, Polly. I don't know whether or not they've talked about this, because it isn't within the context of their interests, but I.

suspect your father knows.'

I suspected that both my parents knew. That they knew before Xan and Kate brought it up at dinner.

Max said, 'I asked Ovid to light the fire in the green guest room to cut the damp. We'll just wait till this storm is over.' She took a soft wool blanket from the chaise longue and tucked it around me. I was over- 127 /.

whelmed by great waves of sleep, a reaction of shock from what Max had told me.

'Little one,' she said softly. 'Let it go. You don't have to bear it with me.

It's over. You have a terrifying ability to enter into the experience of others, that's why you're such a good little actress. You feel things too deeply to bear them unless you can get them out of yourself through some form of art.'

I closed my eyes and her words drifted away with the smoke.

When I woke up, it seemed that a light was s.h.i.+ning in my eyes. The fog had cleared, and the moonlight was coming through the windows. By its ancient light Max was looking at me, her eyes as bright and savage as a gull's.

But her voice was gentle. 'Time for bed.'

I staggered to my feet and followed her to the green guest room. The fire had died down to a glow, but it had taken the damp away, and the breeze coming in from the window was summery. I slipped into bed, and Max tucked the covers about me. I drifted back into sleep.

In the morning I got up early, drank a gla.s.s of milk, drove the length of the Island to our house, and took the boat across the water to Cowpertown and the school bus.

Stubbly gra.s.s was p.r.i.c.kling against my cheek, and a hand moved gently across my hair. I opened my eyes and looked up at Zachary.

"Have a nice nap?"

I sat up and pushed my fingers through my hair. "I guess I'm not quite over jet lag yet. Sandy says it takes a day for each hour."

128.

"Sandy? Who's Sandy?" he asked suspiciously.

"My uncle. He and Aunt Rhea are coming into Athens tomorrow, late afternoon, I.

think."

"Are you going to ditch me for them?"

"We do have plans . . ."

"Will you at least spend the day with me, Sleeping Beauty?"

I probably looked a mess, with gra.s.s marks on my cheek and my hair sticking out in all directions, and here he was asking me to spend another day with him.

"I'd love to spend the day with you."

"You cried out in your sleep," Zachary said. "Listen, about whoever it waswho hurt you, remember I've been hurt, too. It's not a nice feeling. It takes the already shaky ego and shrivels it, like putting a match to a plastic bag. I'm not pus.h.i.+ng you, Polly, but it really might help if you talked about it."

I shook my head. "Thanks, Zach, I don't want to talk about it till I have it all sorted out."

"Sometimes talking helps sort things out."

"I'm not ready. You talk if you want to. I'm sorry you got hurt. I do care."

"You do, don't you? Thanks, Pol, but I'm a selfish b.a.s.t.a.r.d and I deserved anything I got. I lived by soph.o.m.oric mores, Number One all the way. In my world, love affairs were taken with incredible seriousness, which ought to mean at least an expectation of permanence."

"Doesn't it?"

"Ha. Totally serious can mean a few days, and then along comes someone over the horizon who has more money or more prestige, and whoops, musical chairs, change partners. You know how, at c.o.c.ktail parties, the person you're talking to is looking over your shoulder, in case there's somebody more important to talk to?"

129 /.

I didn't. I'd never been to a c.o.c.ktail party.

"In my world they're looking over your shoulder while they're making love, and it's musical chairs again." He sounded bitter.

"Are you talking from experience?" I asked.

"Pretty Pol, in experience I am old enough to be your grandfather." He put his head down on my lap, and I ran my fingers through his silky black hair.

Another first for me. I was amazed at how natural it seemed.

"You're lucky, Red," he said. "My parents don't know anything about trust.

They never trusted each other, and they never trusted me. And I've never trusted them. And your parents trust you, enough to let you come to Greece all alone, not because they want to get rid of you, but because they trust you. I mean, that's pretty incredible."

Even though my parents didn't know I was in Greece all alone, their trust in me, and in the rest of us, was indeed pretty incredible. And that trust had been betrayed, and I hoped they'd never have to know the extent to which it had been betrayed. Part of growing up, I was discovering, was learning that you did not have to tell your parents everything.

Did Mother and Daddy carry trusting us to an extreme?

What choice did they have? The three little ones were the only ones young enough to be monitored twenty-four hours a day. Den was in junior high, the rest of us in high school. We did have curfews, and if there was a valid reason we couldn't make them, they trusted us to phone. When Xan and Kate were late, twice, without calling, they were given a 10 p.m. curfew for the month, which meant no going to Cowpertown after school hours. From their point of view, that was only aninch away 130.

from capital punishment. They complained the entire time, but they kept the curfew.

If I'm a slow developer, Kate's a rapid one. I knew that she'd gone a lot further with boys than I had, not that I'd had much chance, and that this concerned Mother and Daddy. And sometimes Xan seems older, as well as taller, than I. But how much did Mother and Daddy know about string-bean Xan? He was already six three, and good-looking, and a little arrogant, and he brought home straight A's and was star of the basketball team and president of his cla.s.s.

But did they know him?

And how much did they really know about me? When I went out with Renny, Mother and Daddy knew what our plans were, whether we were going to drive, whether Renny had borrowed a boat, They probably suspected that Renny kissed me good night. Did they trust us blindly?

How could Max ever trust anybody again, after what her father did? And yet she trusted.

And I knew that there wasn't any other way to live. You simply cannot go around sniffing suspiciously at everyone and everything, expecting the worst. At least, Mother and Daddy couldn't. And, by gene and precept, neither could I.

'People are trustworthy only by virtue of being trusted,' Daddy had once said.

Having your parents trust you is a pretty heavy burden.

On the other hand, I trusted my parents.

"What're you thinking?" Zachary asked.

"Oh, trusting people. Letting them down."

Zachary patted my thigh. "I can't imagine you letting anybody down."

131.

I ran my fingers through his hair again. "You don't know me very well." The thought flashed across my mind that I had let Max down. I pushed it away.

Zachary yawned. "We'd better be getting back to town. I've made reservations on the roof of the Hilton. We'll have drinks outside first, and I've reserved a window table. The view is better than the food, though the food's not bad.

Rather bland, to please unexperimental Americans. You can even get a hamburger."

He eased out of my lap, stood up, held out his hand to me, then took one finger and touched my cheek. "So soft," he murmured. With the tip of his finger he circled my eyes, then leaned toward me and kissed me.

I pulled away, and started toward the car.

"What's the matter?" he asked. "You know our chemistry's explosive."

"Chemistry's not enough."