I sailed right behind her with the Pyrex coffee pot to refill the guests’ cups and after doing that, put it back on the hot plate and did a quick step through the dining room that was nearly a run. Since Ree-Jane had gone through the music room to the staircase in front, I skipped up the back staircase and ran down the upstairs hall. She had had just enough head start to get up to Aurora’s rooms about two minutes before me.
The caterwauling had already started by the time I reached the second floor, and by the time I got to the
third
floor, Aurora was shrieking as if she’d been set on by thieves wearing stocking masks. There were little animal-like, weepy cries coming from Ree-Jane.
“. . . the hell are
you
doing, you bleached-out . . . ?”
A mumbled, whining answer from Ree-Jane.
“. . . salt and pepper, you blond idiot?”
Another whined reply.
Then came a crash and sobs—I surely
hoped
they were sobs—and Ree-Jane protesting in a reedy voice.
I was hunkered down in a well of shadows at the bottom of the fourth-floor steps, rocking with silent laughter. Now there was scuffling. Maybe Aurora had finally gone berserk and was going at Ree-Jane with her cane or even her pocket knife, slashing the smooth, empty face. I had an image of Ree-Jane in later years, heavily veiled because everyone called her Scarface Davidow. As the ruckus continued, I looked up at the ceiling wanting to thank God for all this, but thinking Father Freeman wouldn’t approve. So I thanked something vague up there, my fist in my mouth to keep back the laughter, drowning in my own saliva and tears.
Finally, the feet came pounding down the stairs and I could see through the staircase dowels something sail through the air and hit Ree-Jane on the head. Aurora screamed that next time she’d throw a whole chicken if she ever saw her peroxide head again.
Weeping and cursing, Ree-Jane ran past my shadow hideout, clawing at her hair. “Bitch! Crazy old fucking bitch!” and she turned the corner and ran down the next flight and, I imagined, on to her room to repair the damage done to her person. I crept up to the landing to see what missile Aurora had thrown. A chicken wing. I left it there.
Naturally, I wanted to be right on hand when Ree-Jane reappeared in the dining room; I took the route this time down the front stairs and through the long reading room and the music room. Calmly, I walked in, whistling under my breath. The dozen-or-so diners were still eating their chicken or baked fish. I was refilling water glasses and trying to ignore Miss Bertha’s demands for hot rolls, when Ree-Jane came gliding into the dining room with her little toe-down-first walk. When she went through one swinging door to the kitchen, I went through the other, and heard Mrs. Davidow, who was readying the grill for her filet mignon, ask her if Aurora liked her dinner. My mother was piping another ring of whipped cream around another Angel Pie. We were always running out of that, for it was very popular, and people were known to ask for seconds.
Ree-Jane was casual, even breezy, as she assured everyone that Aurora thought the food looked delicious. “But she’s so clumsy, she dropped the tray all over the floor. I guess she’ll have to have some more, but I don’t have time to—oh! Filet mignon! I’ll have one, too,
for my dinner.” She ran her index finger right through my mother’s bowl of whipping cream and licked it. My mother glared. Ree-Jane went on to say, “And she thinks I look
just
like Lana Turner.”
Oh, that was too much. I bent over, arms folded around my waist as if I had to pee. Ree-Jane asked me what was my story, and I straightened up and suggested I take Great-Aunt Aurora more chicken.
Ree-Jane flashed me a really mean smile and said, “Yes, why don’t you?”
“In a minute I will. Right now, I’m busy with Miss Bertha.” And I ran to the icebox, took out the ice-filled glass (only slightly melted), set it on a tray, and calmly entered the dining room, where I broke into my quick-step again, and again ignored Miss Bertha’s demand for hot rolls. I picked up speed as I went through the wide dining-room doors and broke into a run (holding the glass steady on the tray) in the music room and on through the reading room to the back office.
Here there was, of course, the usual cocktail-hour debris—a ruin of peanuts, pitcher, olives lolling by the pencil holder, lemon peels small as fingernail clippings on a plate. I scanned the shelves: Smirnoff, Early Times, Wild Turkey, a small bottle of fruit-flavored brandy . . . but no Southern Comfort, damn! I debated, shrugged, poured a little bit of the brandy on top of the orange juice, poured in some Early Times, filled it up with Wild Turkey, and floated the freshest of the lemon peels on top. I plucked up a cocktail napkin and ran up the two flights of stairs, depositing the glass and tray in the same shadowy place I’d been hiding in. Then, lickety-split, I retraced my steps right back into the dining room, where I attracted no attention at all, except from Miss Bertha, who was still yelling for hot rolls. It would have been too much to expect Ree-Jane to do any table waiting after seeing her mother preparing filet mignon. Mrs. Davidow was now sitting at the family table cutting it up and caring for nobody or nothing as long as she had her steak and her glass of whisky.
For the few minutes I’d been gone, Ree-Jane must have been talking about the Paradises. She leaned across the serving counter, her pointy chin in her hands, supervising my mother’s preparation of the lobster tails that she was apparently having instead of gruel. No ordinary fried chicken, no fish for her. Mrs. Davidow’s store of filet mignon must have gone dry; either that or she wasn’t sharing with Ree-Jane, who was now insisting on drawn butter as she put down the Paradises. Well, I had to hand it to her: a chicken wing in her
hair and she was acting as if she’d been in total command of the Aurora situation. I felt something almost approaching admiration, which I quickly stomped on.
“She’s mental,” said Ree-Jane of Aurora, “but I guess the whole family must have been, and that’s really too bad—I mean, you marrying into a family like that—why, what you must have put up with!”
My mother gave her an evil look and plopped the lobster tails on a plate. “Nothing to what I put up with now,” she said, and I thought I saw dry ice coming out of her ears.
“Well, the guests are awful, that’s true. Where’s the drawn butter?” And she peered all around, as if maybe Walter had it back there by the dishwasher.
I myself had gone behind the serving counter to take down a warm plate from the ledge over the stove (as my mother would not be caught dead serving up hot food on cold plates), on which I first placed a napkin and then arranged a gorgeous piece of chicken breast on that—the napkin to soak up any little hint of oil—and beside this I set a small dish of mashed potatoes.
Ree-Jane was still insulting my mother’s intelligence by saying, “And the hotel’s still
named
for her. I mean, ‘Hotel Paradise’ is kind of silly at this point, isn’t it?”
I knew, of course, what name Ree-Jane favored: the Davidow Inn. But she didn’t dare say that, seeing how she and her mother have only been hanging around for five years and the Paradises for more like a hundred. I hummed as I made a little dent in Aurora’s mashed potatoes and poured melted butter into it.
“Something like, oh, ‘The Willows,’ that would be nice.”
My mother lit up a cigarette and tossed her a dangerous glancing look. “The last time I looked, they were oaks.”
“You know what I mean—
where are you going with my drawn butter?”
I merely slipped away with Aurora’s fresh dinner, slapping through the swing door with the tray held high as Miss Bertha shouted for hot rolls.
“Cold Turkey.” I told Aurora Paradise what I’d named it after she’d sipped the drink. “There wasn’t any Southern Comfort left.”
She took another sip and smacked her lips. “Pretty good. Not as good as the Cold Comfort, though. You left out the gin.”
“There wasn’t any gin left, either.” Did she think I ran a liquor store?
“Who’re you kidding? Lola Davidow probably never ran out of gin in her entire life.”
“Well, she’s drinking vodka now. And the bottle was empty.”
“That stands to reason.” She settled back to drink her Cold Turkey and ignore her dinner.
The room was the same; I was beginning to think I’d dreamed it all. The Bible was still displayed, this time open to a page I bet she never read. The walnut shells were lined up (for suckers like me). The steamer trunks stood open, as well as a couple of suitcases, with clothes and scarves and jewelry strewn about as if Aurora had been rummaging in them. I hadn’t noticed before, but the dresses hanging in the steamer trunks were more like evening gowns or party things, quite fancy with lacework, embroidered with seed pearls, or strung about with dazzling black sequins. I wondered what sort of life Aurora Paradise had lived to have such clothes.
“Who’s that crazy blonde that sashayed up here pretty as you please with my dinner? Who gave her permission? What nerve!”
“You know her. That’s Mrs. Davidow’s daughter. It’s Jane Davidow.” I left off the “Ree.”
“Oh, lordy! Another one of
them
? Impostors! They’re after our money!”
I was surprised to hear her call it “our.” “Well, they’re out of luck, because my mother doesn’t have any.”
“
Paradise
money. Your mother ain’t a Paradise. Here, cut this up. I’ve got rheumatism.” As if to prove this, she slowly opened and closed her fingers.
I knew nothing was the matter with her hands; she just wanted to bark orders at me. But she sat there stretching out her fingers, rubbing them as if they pained her. Today they were dressed in black crocheted mittens decorated with the tiniest satin rosebuds imaginable. I picked up the knife and fork and pulled the white meat from the bone.
“Where’s my peas?”
“On the floor, just where you left them.” Fortunately, the food had landed with the tray underneath it, so that the upset dishes had spilled onto its surface. Minimum cleanup, probably for me.
She looked astonished, but I knew it was all fake. “
Me?
I never did! It was that bimbo that threw the dish at me!”
We locked eyes, with mine, I hoped, looking shrewd. Finally, her own glance slid away. It pleased me very much, being able to outstare Aurora Paradise. Looking out of the window, she started humming to give me the impression she wasn’t even aware of my presence. I finished cutting the chicken into bite-sized pieces as she switched from humming to actually singing. It was “Alice Blue Gown” and her voice was awful, raspy and nasal and off-key. But she seemed to think it was wonderful, for she clasped her hand to her chest and raised her chin and fairly bellowed
“When I first
waaan
-dered down into
tow-en . . .”
“Your dinner’s getting cold!” I had to raise my own voice over this caterwauling.
As if she’d never started singing in the first place, she stopped all of a sudden and jabbed her fork into the mashed potatoes. “Lots of butter. Good.”
“It’s drawn butter.” I stood there—never having been invited yet to sit down—scratching my elbows and letting her eat for a moment. Then I said, “I was wondering about Rose. Tell me more about her.”
“Rose who?” she asked, mouth thick with potatoes.
I sighed heavily. “
You
know who. You’re the one who mentioned her in the first place. Rose Devereau.”
Daintily, she plucked up a chicken bite between thumb and forefinger and popped it in her mouth and chewed and ignored me.
I persisted. “You said she played the piano.” I was holding Ben Queen in reserve, like one of the aces in the Bicycle deck.
She went on popping chicken in her mouth, after which she pulled the napkin from her collar and wiped and wiped her fingers for no reason at all except to irritate me and keep me waiting.
Elaborately, I pulled the front page of the paper from my pocket and unfolded it. “Well, I guess you don’t want to hear about the dead woman they found over by White’s Bridge. In Mirror Pond,” I added. As she looked at me bug-eyed, I refolded the paper and went over to pick up the tray of spilled food, as if I meant to leave.
“What dead woman? Who?”
“Some lady the police say could have killed herself. With a gun.”
She leaned forward, eager for details. “Suicide?”
“Probably it wasn’t. Probably, it was
murder.”
I started for the door.
One thing about Aurora Paradise was, nobody had to spell out “blackmail,” she being an old hand at it herself. “Come on back here!” She pursed her lips, as if thinking hard. “Well, now. Rose . . . Oh, yes, that Rose Fern Devereau. Played the piano and Isabel sang. Could hear it all the way across the lake.”
“You told me.” I wondered how she knew it was Rose Fern (which I thought a very pretty name) playing the piano. Aurora left a lot of stuff out; either that or she made it up.
“Well,
Isabel
thought she was a big-time opera star, when
I
was always the one with the voice.” She broke again into “Alice Blue Gown,” and I let her sing a few bars. After all, she was at least on the general subject. She stopped and said, “But Isabel sang at the Chautauqua, so she thought she was something—
ha!”
“Chautauqua” had always been a special word for me. I paused in my search for information to let my mind play over it. The word had about it the suggestion of magic, as if an enormous circus had set up its tents to dazzle Spirit Lake. It was no tent, though, but a permanent amphitheater put up somewhere around the turn of the century and most of it still standing, but disused, across the highway up the high
bank in an acre or two of cleared space across from the Hotel Paradise. This huge theater would be demolished eventually, for the wood was termite-ridden and rotted and part of it had already undergone a slow collapse. Will and I had been told not to play there, it being dangerous; of course, we did (in our playing-together days), danger being the most attractive ingredient of any activity. The Chautauqua was a long-ago annual summer event, luring quite famous people, mostly singers and musicians. I have seen faded brown photos in one of my mother’s dresser drawers and in old albums of women in huge hats and flowing gowns, fancy Victorian finery, much like the dresses in Aurora’s steamer trunks.