Seventeen Widows of Sans Souci Page 3

  “No, ma’am.” The waitress’s voice held a note of dull resignation.

  Ordering the meal took a long time because there was no single item that was not subjected to revision by Harriet Gregory toward her individual taste. Nona began to feel ashamed. Nona began to say to the waitress, in apologetic tones, that, as far as she was concerned, it didn’t matter.

  When the ordering was at last over, Nona asked with curiosity, “Do you eat here often?”

  “Oh, we all do,” said Harriet Gregory. “It’s the nearest decent place and you do get tired of cooking for yourself.”

  Nona let her lashes wag. “Is there anyone else from Sans Souci in here now?” A part of her called this curiosity childish.

  “No, no. Oh, there’s Mrs. Rogan …” Harriet shrugged.

  “Which is she?”

  “The old woman in the corner,” said Harriet Gregory in a contemptuous tone. “She’s … odd.” The implication was that no one who was not odd noticed anyone who was. And of course Nona Henry was not odd.

  Nona found herself peering to spot an old woman in a corner, but before she could find one, Harriet was speaking.

  “I can’t tell you,” said she with a quick and almost gruesome contortion of her painted mouth that was meant to be a wry and charming smile, “—I can’t tell you how nice it is to see somebody young moving in.”

  “Young!” said Nona in genuine surprise. “I’d hardly say that about me. I am a grandmother.”

  “Are you really?” said Harriet. “I can hardly believe it. Pardon me for asking a personal question but are you a widow, Mrs. Henry?”

  “Yes,” said Nona quietly, not to arouse the sleeping pain.

  She looked up in a moment because there had been no response to her admission. No “Oh, I’m so sorry.” No comment. Her seat companion had clenched her long jaw and was staring, not seeing.

  “We are seventeen,” intoned Harriet Gregory.

  “What do you …?”

  “Seventeen,” said Harriet Gregory crooningly. “It is so strange. We always come back to seventeen.”

  “Seventeen what?” Nona asked with asperity born of sudden fright.

  “Seventeen widows.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “There are seventeen widows in Sans Souci.”

  Nona felt shocked. Oh Lord, oh Lord, what have I got myself into? she cried in her mind. “You can’t mean that,” she chided aloud, aghast.

  “Oh, yes,” said Harriet Gregory. “Since Jessie More—she was in 208 where you are—since Jessie left to be near her daughter …” The voice was dreary. “And since poor Rhoda Gorman is … gone.” Her eyes flashed and Nona knew, divined, was intuitively certain, that this Rhoda-whoever was dead-gone—and also that Harriet Gregory would never let the word “death” or any of its derivatives past her terrified lips. “But Tess Rogan came two weeks ago, and now you come and we are seventeen again.”

  “Seventeen widows!” Nona blinked. “How many apartments are there?”

  “Only nineteen,” said Harriet promptly, “not counting, of course, Morgan Lake’s private apartment, which I’ve never seen but they say—”

  “Are there no families?” interrupted Nona.

  “The Lakes,” said Harriet. Her grimace held pity.

  “No children!”

  “The Lakes have a girl in high school.”

  “No … no men!”

  “Well, there is Mr. Avery Patrick.”

  “Who is he?”

  “They say he does sleep in his apartment at night but nobody ever sees him around. I don’t know why he lives at Sans Souci. Nobody knows.” Harriet relished the mystery.

  “Seventeen widows?” said Nona. “But that’s … that’s … very strange.”

  “That’s nothing!” said Harriet Gregory. “I know buildings with more widows than that in them. Sans Souci is very small, you know. The owners are holding it for the sake of the land.”

  “The land?”

  “Of course. Land here is very valuable, and especially a corner. They will get a fabulous price for it, someday. Meanwhile, they let it run down … as I guess you can tell …”

  Nona swallowed.

  “Of course that’s what they say,” continued Harriet. “I don’t know anything about real estate. I do know it’s hard to get anything done. Nobody knows who the owners are, you see.”

  Nona felt battered about by surprises.

  “Of course, the rent is reasonable,” said Harriet encouragingly, “and the location … oh, you’ll like it.” Her eyes glistened. “Especially if you make friends. Friends make all the difference. Sans Souci is not so bad really. Do you know Southern California, Mrs. Henry? Or may I say ‘Nona’?”

  Nona regarded the arching brows helplessly. “Please do,” she said mechanically. “This part of the world is all new to me.”

  “Oh then,” cried Harriet, “you must let me show you …”

  The food came and Nona ate it, listening meanwhile to a long list of sights to see. Harriet would take Nona to a. Mission. No trouble. Harriet had a car. It wasn’t much. But it would get them around. Harriet would take Nona to Hollywood. Of course there was nothing to see really, but everyone always wanted to go. Nona kept making grateful little protests, deploring the effort, but not refusing the invitations. For surely this woman meant well, was being very friendly. Prospects were opening to Nona’s bewildered imagination. Sight-seeing? Well, that filled time. That would help fill a letter. Something to write home about. (The postal card lay in her coat pocket.)

  Her dinner companion had a difficult voice. It was sometimes too sweet, sometimes almost strangled with tension and excitement. It went on and on.

  Nona ate daintily, and as slowly as she could, the mediocre food. She did not wish to consume her meal too soon, for her companion was talking so much that she was scarcely eating at all.

  Meanwhile people came and went in the restaurant, without Nona’s attention, for she took care to listen politely.

  Suddenly Harriet stopped in the middle of a sentence. Nona could not guess why until she saw that Harriet’s silence was related to the movement of a certain woman who had just risen from a corner table and was about to walk their way.

  This woman was tall, and not too bulky. In fact, her dark red coat hung with a certain swagger and she moved lithely. She had white hair, cut close to a round head. Her face was short-chinned, like Nona’s own, with rather a merry look to the mouth and jaw.

  She approached. Her blue-gray eyes cast a glance to Harriet Gregory. “Good evening,” she said.

  “Oh, hello,” said Harriet with that grimace. Harriet said no more and the woman did not pause. Her eyes had time to meet Nona’s briefly, and then she had walked past.

  “That’s Tess Rogan,” said Harriet with a smoldering look. “She’s seventy-one!”

  Nona gasped. The woman had given no such impression.

  “See what I mean?” cried Harriet triumphantly. “There’s you and me and Georgia Oliver and, well … maybe Daisy Robinson, who are still young enough to navigate … fairly well. Everybody else in the place is doddering!”

  Nona only half-heard. “You say she is odd?” she asked. Those gray-blue eyes had sent a shiver through her. Nona Henry had been sitting properly, poised and bright, woman-in-restaurant-dining-with-stranger … and then that look had shaken her, ripped at her. She had felt like pulling the tablecloth, and all the dishes with it, off the table. It was that crazy feeling.… Why? Was it something odd about the woman that had roused up Nona’s personal imp, her little enemy, that frightened her these days?

  “Tess Rogan?” Harriet made a slashing motion of her hand. “Nobody knows who she is. I tried to be friendly. I mean, I am not a snob. But she says odd things. You can’t get close to her.” Harriet’s eyes glistened approvingly upon Nona Henry. “Not of our world … I hate to put it this way, but she’s common. She tells lies,” said Harriet Gregory. Nona blinked. “Oh yes, but most of the women at Sans S
ouci are ladies. It’s a good address,” said Harriet Gregory with satisfaction.

  Chapter 3

  When the meal was over, and each woman had paid for her own with an absent-minded air, as if money scarcely existed, Harriet Gregory insisted upon showing Nona Henry the market. They walked the short distance to a bright and humming place where every kind of food on earth, and many things besides, seemed spread out in a vast horizontal labyrinth. All one had to do was pluck these things from a convenient shelf, put them into one’s metal cart, and then pay for them. Nona was dazzled by the sight of so much. She tried to organize her thoughts, to find and select what she would need for breakfast, possibly for lunch, and, in addition, certain inevitable staples. But Harriet Gregory began to trip off into distant aisles and return with prize packages, earnestly recommended.

  Raisin bread? Nona didn’t care for raisin bread and said so gently.

  Minestrone? Oh, excellent, for something in a can. Nona didn’t fancy the look of it.

  “You must try this cheese! It’s delicious!”

  Nona found herself—tired as she was, and emotionally worn, disorganized, and anxious not to offend—beginning to accept at least some of Harriet’s offerings. It seemed necessary. The woman was so eager.

  But when at last they staggered out, Harriet was carrying a large brown bag and Nona was carrying another even larger. The bags were heavy.

  Outside, now, suddenly, a breeze was blowing. Nona Henry would have made nothing of the rattling of leaves, the dancing of the dust, or she might even have welcomed the cooling touch on her brow, but Harriet Gregory reacted as if it had been a hurricane. So unusual, she opined. Something ominous, she implied by the hunching of her shoulders, the ducking of her head. Possibly dangerous. So Nona found herself, infected by the same feeling, huddling and hurtling toward the safety of Sans Souci.

  They panted across the street to the corner where a light shone in the top of the Spanish arch. Just as they reached that curb Nona became aware of a figure standing quite still on the sidewalk, just on the rim of the lights’ circle. Harriet Gregory saw it too, and stopped moving with a wrench of her nerves that reverberated upon Nona’s own. “Is anything wrong?” croaked Harriet.

  The figure wore a long coat which was reddish where the light could touch it. She had a close-cropped white head and although her face was shadowed and invisible one could tell that it tilted upward. “I’m just sampling the wind,” said Tess Rogan placidly.

  Harriet ducked her head and scuttled past into the arch. Nona—feeling, again, that shiver, as of something strange—followed as if a demon bit at her heels. They rushed along the patio walk. The wind shook the treetops: they were in the bottom of a box, and all the air seemed to be drawn upward into the turbulence. Nona, watching her own footing, could see Harriet’s feet and realized that Harriet was one of those women whose ankles seemed to rise from the middle of the foot. The heels protruded. Nona felt a wash of distaste that turned into a sense of wrongness. What was so wrong?

  They burst through the glass door and here was no wind and no weather, but bright still warm air and the stiff order of the little lobby and Oppie Etting behind the desk, agreeing at once that the world outside was wild, tonight.

  Surely, thought Nona, no woman—and certainly no woman seventy-one years of age—stands alone at night on a street corner. It is not done! It is so odd as to be wrong. The old woman in the red coat must be very odd. Nona shivered.

  “May I make a suggestion?” said Harriet Gregory for the seventh time.

  “What is it?” said Nona mildly.

  “This cupboard is the most convenient for your canned goods. You don’t want to stoop every time …”

  “I think I’ll arrange the rest of this in the morning,” said Nona suddenly. Her head was beginning to ache.

  Harriet Gregory lived on the first floor but Harriet had insisted upon carrying the grocery bag. Harriet had come up. Harriet was here. Harriet was very kind, but she had no sense of limit. There was no end. Nona looked around her kitchen, where all but the perishables were dumped upon the tiny counter. (All the too much she’d bought.) She said, with the type of sweetness that asks for a no, “I could make a cup of coffee. Would you like one, Mrs. Gregory?”

  “Oh, no,” said Harriet promptly. “No, don’t bother. I’ll just have a cigarette. And please call me Harriet?”

  She went into the living room and sat down. Nona followed and sat down helplessly.

  “Do you mind a suggestion?” said Harriet. “Jessie More used to have her sofa drawn right across the windows. It was quite attractive.”

  “Was it?” murmured Nona.

  “I can’t do that. I have only the one room, you see, and the bed comes down. A separate bedroom is so nice.”

  “Yes.”

  “You must come see my house.”

  “Thank you,” said Nona.

  “I wish I could have afforded this,” said Harriet with a grimace. “This is very nice. Across from Mrs. Fitz, too.”

  “Mrs. Fitz?” Nona had reduced herself to echoes.

  “It’s Mrs. Fitzgibbon, of course. But everybody calls her Mrs. Fitz. Oh, she is just a lovely, lovely person! Very fine family. Good blood, you know, tells.” Harriet’s eyes glistened. “Her husband was a judge in New York. A very important man.”

  “A widow?” said Nona.

  Harriet didn’t even hear. She was embarked upon a flood of talk. “There are two Fitzgibbon sons,” she said. “One I haven’t seen but he is a very successful attorney in San Francisco. The other one is a foreign correspondent! If you can imagine! What experiences! All over the world!! And the sophistication. I am not a snob but I do like to see a man who has a certain something …”

  Nona said, “Um.”

  “He was here last summer,” announced Harriet. “As a matter of fact we have had a romance. He is engaged to Georgia Oliver. You’ll meet Georgia. She is a lovely, lovely girl. That is to say, she’s about our age.” Harriet snorted.

  “A widow?” murmured Nona. She had a vision of Harriet wound up, pierced and crisscrossed by all the interrelationships, all the news, all the gossip of Sans Souci … and of herself pinned here to listen to all of it. Tonight.

  “Oh yes. But Georgia, of course, is marrying again. She’s so devoted to Mrs. Fitz. So nice to see that. I’m happy for them both. Although I, of course, could never marry again.” Harriet Gregory’s face lost its piety and took on a fanatical look.

  “My husband …” she began.

  She rattled on. She talked as if she had thirsted so to talk that the thirst was unquenchable. She spilled out her version of her life. Dick Gregory had been so talented, so misunderstood. He had wanted to write. Oh yes. Harriet had his manuscripts. She never showed them to anyone, she said fiercely (and Nona wondered). He had been denied his true career. Harriet would keep his manuscripts for the children. Oh yes, a son—a bachelor. A fine young man. Only thirty. Time enough. A daughter, too. Eve was a career girl, unmarried. Both so busy, so very very busy. Devoted of course—but busy. In New York. Oh, it was far. Harriet put up with life alone out here on the coast for the sake of the climate and the easy living. But to be so far from her devoted children was not easy. And Harriet had found no truly understanding friend. A friend made all the difference … Harriet always said. Two women could go where one could not. Didn’t Nona think so? And Harriet had this little old car … “You and I,” she said.

  Nona found herself turning cold.

  And Harriet’s hide was not too thick to perceive this. Harriet said, immediately, “I’ve been talking about myself. What did your husband do?” She contorted her mouth. It was not a smile. It was an announcement of Harriet’s intention to appear to be smiling.

  “He was in business,” murmured Nona. She always said this, vaguely. “In Poughkeepsie, New York.”

  “Oh, I know where that is. And do you have children?”

  “I have a married daughter,” Nona said, “with a baby granddaughter.”
The sore and weary heart was wishing to talk, she discovered with some surprise. “And I have another little grandchild …”

  “Oh, how nice!” gushed Harriet Gregory. And then talked on. Harriet didn’t wait to hear the straight of it. Harriet assumed this was simple, although it was not. “May I make a suggestion?” gushed Harriet. “You will be here for the winter, at least? Well, I have been here six years. There are some … mistakes. I would suggest that you be a little bit careful about Agnes Vaughn.”

  “Who?” said Nona, politeness just barely disguising her frustration.

  “Well,” said Harriet, “Agnes Vaughn is just impossible, actually. There are three of them. I call them the Unholy Three …” Harriet began to snort. Oh, that was a rum bunch, she told Nona. Agnes Vaughn, who was pushing seventy-five, was an old spider, that’s what she was. And just couldn’t bear the fact that Ursula Fitzgibbon was beloved by all. And higher class. Well, you couldn’t deny it. There was that Ida Milbank, a little idiot of a woman, who trotted back and forth bearing tales … and there was Felice Paull and wait till Nona saw her. A mammoth! Always starting trouble.

  Harriet was getting more and more confidential, excited, and malicious.

  Oh what do I care? thought Nona. I wish she’d go. What do I care about this nest of widows?

  Still, there was one flare of curiosity and she might as well gratify it. “Who has the angle apartment on this floor?” she asked bluntly, remembering that flood of light from the opening door and the two voices, the sense of life and gaiety.

  “Bettina Goodenough,” said Harriet, in a grudging tone. “She and Sarah Lee Cunneen, they go a lot. Cards, you know, and that sort of thing.” Harriet was contemptuous.

  But Nona received enlightenment. Nona knew that, whoever and whatever these women were, they had not wanted to play cards with Harriet Gregory. By now Nona knew that Harriet was not talking kindly to inform. Harriet was talking from her own need to talk. Harriet had not approached Nona with pity for Nona’s loneliness. She was a snobbish, opinionated, shallow pest—and this was both the cause and the effect of Harriet’s own desperate loneliness.