Seventeen Widows of Sans Souci Read online

  “This is Cal Tech, by the way,” said Daisy, careening the car to the left. Nona admired the vine-clad buildings as best she could between wincing and watching traffic. Soon they began to run past handsome lawns that were spread opulently before beautiful houses.

  “But isn’t this lovely!” exclaimed Nona.

  “Yes, very plush,” said Daisy, brushing off material wealth. They were going along fairly steadily and Nona unclenched her toes.

  “What is the tale?” she inquired. “About the hermit?”

  “Oh, well … a woman named Marie Gardner,” began Daisy. She disciplined her mind, even while her body maneuvered the car with a hair-raising sloppiness. “—lives on the first floor, east end. She has been there I don’t know how many years and has never been seen outside of her door. Well, Felice Paull— Do you know Felice Paull?”

  “I don’t know anyone,” said Nona, “except Harriet Gregory.”

  “Poor Harriet,” said Daisy with a wise look. The car wavered and Nona’s foot pushed instinctively upon the floor even as she returned the look and felt a wave of satisfaction for the communication.

  Daisy seemed to lean on the wheel; she subdued the wobble for the moment. “Well, our Felice is a large black-clad female who busy-bodies under the impression that this is civic virtue.” Daisy chuckled. With this relaxation, her right front tire hit the curb. She yanked and a black Dodge in the next lane braked hard, saving the day, as Daisy did not appear to notice. “Our Felice got herself worked up about Marie Gardner, in sheer curiosity, I imagine. Although perhaps Agnes Vaughn was behind it. Agnes Vaughn thinks up these things. Felice Paull just does the dirty work.” Daisy guffawed. “Anyhow, Felice began to insist that Marie Gardner was very probably ill or dead or at least moldering away in there and she must be checked up on. Poor Morgan Lake,” said Daisy. “Whoops, I think that was our turn. Oh well, we’ll try the next one. Well, Mr. Lake finally succumbed to her exhortations and, key in hand—Felice breathing down his neck of course—he opened Marie Gardner’s door. I wish I had seen it.”

  Nona hung on as Daisy whirled them to the right. “What happened?” she gasped.

  “Aren’t these street names delightful!” cried Daisy. “Orlando, Chaucer … this is San Marino where culture is rife!”

  Nona laughed aloud suddenly.

  “Well,” went on Daisy, “poor Marie Gardner happens to be a psychological prisoner.”

  “Oh?”

  “She’s neurotic as they come. Afraid, you see?” Daisy herself seemed fearless, Nona noticed. “But when attacked in her lair she went (of course) on the defensive and simply flew at Felice, tooth and claw. Felice, I understand, retreated without honor, and poor Mr. Lake took the brunt, like the gentleman he is. Oh, there is nothing one can do for the poor soul. It would be impossible, now, to coax her to come out. She has been alone too long.”

  Fear walked up Nona’s spine. Did Marie Gardner watch out her windows, from where she cowered? She said, “That’s rather sad.”

  “Yes, it is,” said Daisy at once. “Do you know the older of the maids, one Elise?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “She is the only human being that Marie Gardner can tolerate. The poor soul lives from week to week for the day that Elise comes in to clean.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Nona. (She herself had welcomed the Friday appearance of the black woman, so neat and polite, with her quiet smile, her human presence.)

  “You may say so,” said Daisy. “But at least Marie Gardner never pesters her fellow man which is more than one can say for Felice Paull. Or Harriet Gregory. Who is a first-quality pest. Compulsively, I imagine.” Daisy Robinson’s face was perfectly cheerful.

  “It’s our lot,” said Nona piously, “to study how not to be a bother.”

  “It is our lot,” said Daisy Robinson, “to find something to do with ourselves. That is where one’s background comes in. One’s education.” Daisy rolled the Plymouth between stone pillars into a driveway. “If you have acquired an open mind and any intellectual curiosity, this can be your salvation.”

  “Perhaps so,” said Nona, thoughtfully.

  “Ah, here we are. Now, let me show you …”

  Daisy parked in a lot, led Nona past the little gatehouse (or whatever it was) and a guard who asked them to sign cards. He made Nona think of a butler, for some reason.

  Then Daisy, emitting cries of enthusiasm, led her into the gallery and from Gutenberg Bible to First Folio.

  There was nothing the matter with the Huntington Library. Nona put on interest, forced it hopefully as one will do in a museum, priming the pump, hoping for a real flow. No gush came. Her core remained, to her dismay, perfectly numb.

  Daisy’s ecstasies over faded trivia in the handwriting of dead authors moved Nona Henry not at all. She could not care. The mind was mildly ruffled and lightly informed, but the heart was not engaged.

  They trudged the long room, peering into cases, and they roamed the side galleries where Daisy scoffed learnedly at some ornate furniture, and then they crossed the grounds to the huge old mansion where the paintings were hung.

  Nona knew little or nothing about painting, and she found that her feet had begun to burn, in a distracting and humiliating fashion. When at last they came into a skylighted room where the Gainsboroughs and the Reynoldses were hanging, something inside her flickered alive just for a moment. But Daisy Robinson put that light out. Daisy knew too much. Her knowledge was intimidating.

  Nona found that she did not want to go on to see the gardens, after all these hard floors. Nor did Daisy. “A lot of walking,” Daisy said. Daisy’s mind was evidently not open to plants and flowers. Nona thought they were leaving but instead she found herself standing on her burning feet around that gatehouse while Daisy examined one by one the scholarly volumes on the racks there which were for sale. She chose one with a gleam in her eye that Nona found perfectly incomprehensible.

  Nona herself bought some picture postal cards, bearing reproductions of “The Blue Boy” and “Pinkie.” Culture they would say over the miles. She’d send one to Dane Mercier, her other son-in-law who lived in Seattle with a second wife and Nona’s other little granddaughter whom she never saw any more.

  But she would not send one of these cards to little Milly, Millicent’s baby.

  No. A stuffed bunny would be better, Nona thought. She herself had begun to think a stuffed bunny had more life in it than the Huntington Library.

  She was exhausted by the time Daisy tore herself away. Daisy took no notice but chattered all the return journey about the early art of bookmaking, as if Nona must be athirst to know these things. Nona envied her.

  Once they were out of the elevator, on the second floor of Sans Souci, Daisy Robinson dropped Nona like a bundle of wash. Without any ceremony whatsoever she barged on down the east corridor toward her own place, rich with inner resources.

  Nona hobbled down the north wing to 208 and, in the dead air, took her shoes off, determining to make do with leftovers tonight for supper. She massaged her arches and looked at the four fat books she had brought from the public library.

  Tomes!

  Yet it was true and Nona didn’t doubt that it was true—the mind survives the body’s stiffening. The cultivation of the mind, the curiosity of the intellect—this one had, to go on with. Daisy Robinson was right.

  Yet Nona Henry had a restless unwillingness. She could not help feeling that, for her, to begin to read and study, to acquire these intellectual enthusiasms, would be a going back.

  For, once upon a time, Nona O’Connor had come out of college with a mind sharpened by and conditioned toward words and ideas. She had, on that confident peak of her youth, argued and theorized with her peers, until “real” life—love, marriage, babies, and the imperatives of learning housekeeping—had seemed to be the next right stage. After which, what?

  Yet Daisy Robinson was right, she supposed. Nona rubbed her foot and felt her heart sinking, heavy, lifeless, unengaged; and s
he envied, but did not hope.

  Chapter 6

  Christmas was coming and the seventeen widows of Sans Souci were aflutter.

  This was the time of the year when their two worlds came together, for, quite naturally, each of them lived in two worlds. They were like college girls in a dormitory, in that they ate and slept, moved and struggled, here … where nobody wanted to know, except very superficially, where they had come from. So each had her status here, detached from the past, achieved in this place, related to each other. Yet at the same time each of them existed, still, in the world whence she had come and to which she still pertained.

  This division was understood. Whenever one of them had visitors—relatives or old friends from “back home”—the other widows of Sans Souci, by a never-mentioned convention, would keep away. Not many of those being visited attempted to bring the two lives together. It was not that the relatives or friends from afar could not have met the new “friends” in the building and been mutually polite. It was as if the widows were each two women and the mixing of two selves was what might be confusing.

  Only at Christmas, when a widow “remembered” the family and old friends, and she “remembered” from Sans Souci, did her two worlds partially blend.

  In the bright sunny weather, the tinsel garlands swayed over the shop-lined main street. At night they blazed with colored lights as the shops began to be open in the evenings. Christmas carols whined out of machines over traffic noises. Santa Clauses, their fake ermine on the red suits purely symbolic in the warm winds, stood on street corners tinkling bells over black pots that yawned for the nickels and dimes of the charitably inclined. Store windows burst into red and green … or else pink and gold … blue and silver. People swarmed.

  So Southern California worked itself up to believe that Christmas was coming by artificially reminding itself of the German Christmas, a pine-tree-and-snow Christmas, or the English Christmas, a yule-log-and-plum-pudding Christmas; while all the time, the terrain, the climate, the sun itself shining on palm and fig tree, the essential desert land, the arid mountains—all this was similar, indeed, to the real Christmas setting in Palestine, almost 2000 years ago.

  Nobody thought of this (except Morgan Lake, one afternoon).

  There was so much to think about. The widows buzzed.

  There was the annual twitter about Christmas cards. The choice, the price, the delivery date, then the lists. (Whom did I forget last year?) The addressing of envelopes and the licking of stamps. So exhausting! Since this was the time when every solvent American addressed a card to every person he had ever known in all his life (and still remembered) the post office began to put on extra help. But if the post office found this exhausting nobody cared, for the Christmas spirit had begun to rage.

  There was the annual twitter about gifts. How to find something that would seem thoughtful, and also more expensive than it actually was! The widows racked their memories to fit a toy to a grandchild’s age. What did a fourteen-year-old want? How about a boy of six? Shop girls were trained to be helpful, so that one always went over one’s budget for the grandchildren. But to be penniless on December 26th was right and honorable. (And the children so often sent a check.) The children, the grownups, would have to be satisfied with tokens. They would understand. It was the thought that counted. Little sachets? So nice, and not expensive. Socks and handkerchiefs for sons-in-law were not clever, but always so useful.

  So it went.

  The crowds in the stores were dreaded and to be avoided if possible. Shopping was not only a chore, it was a physical ordeal. But it must be done, no matter what the cost to one’s strength, for Christmas was coming and everyone was filled with the spirit of it.

  No gain to try the small shops, the widows concluded. After all, the big department stores would wrap and mail and, really, it was silly to go to all the trouble of wrapping a gift oneself. Who could do it as well as those professionals? It was definitely beyond good sense to try to take a package to the post office in person. The carrying, the waiting, the standing in line. The fatigue of it!

  Morgan Lake watched all this, the comings and the goings, the frustrations and the anxieties, the grim faces.

  He supervised the putting up of a Christmas tree in the lobby. Kelly Shane did the labor, strung the long cords of red and blue lights, put the silver star on the tip. It was a tall tree and a whole morning was needed to move the furniture, drag in the tree, set it firmly upright, trim it, and then clear away the resulting debris. Afterward Morgan Lake helped Kelly arrange a string of lights to arch over the entrance door. It tired him.

  Christmas was so tiring! The widows would come in groaning with fatigue, pressured with undone tasks and mailing deadlines.

  Morgan thought, But why should it be so tiring? Why should Christmas have become an ordeal? A period of such pressure? He questioned the objective toward which people toiled. One must be clever and careful and use one’s energy shrewdly, so as to get through this period with the least drain upon one’s purse or upon one’s nervous sytem.

  Then when one got through, what was the reward? he wondered. What was success in this effort? To have done what everyone else was doing? The just-what-I-wanted’s? What satisfaction, really—and of what?

  He hated to feel so cynical.

  Rose Lake was in her annual twitter about Winnie’s Christmas present. “A formal,” she had said. “Maybe it will cost, but we’d have to buy her one, anyhow.”

  Oh, shrewd. Yes, indeed. Winnie would be happy (and they would have had to buy one, anyhow, sooner or later).

  Every widow who came into the lobby spoke cooingly about the tree. So lovely! Just beautiful! Put them in the Christmas spirit, they opined. Morgan thought, And saves each of you the trouble and expense of a tree of your own? He reproached himself for feeling so cynical and sad. Poor things, it was about all they could do to get through Christmas.

  But sometimes he looked across the lobby at the shining tree, the silver and the gold, the red and the blue, the splendor … and he remembered how Rose and Avery Patrick had agreed, five years ago when these ornaments had been chosen, that it was more politic to have no angels.

  But where are there any angels? he wondered.

  The Christmas holidays had come bearing conflict within his family. High school was letting out, Winnie would be around, and Rose usually went on a perfect binge of motherhood, in this season. But Winnie chose, this year, to rebel. “I am invited down to Laguna,” she had said. “Mary Bassett’s folks have a gorgeous house down there and they are letting her have a house party, between Christmas and New Year’s. Eight girls. For two whole days.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Morgan had said hopefully. But Rose’s face had turned stony.

  “It would be,” said Winnie wistfully, “if I could only go.”

  “For how long? Two days?” said Rose shrilly.

  “No use me thinking about it,” Winnie had said very coldly and sadly. “They’ll have a neat time, though. The Bassetts just do everything. I mean they’ve got money …”

  “Is it your clothes?” Rose’s eyes rolled resentfully.

  “Of course not,” said Winnie, and sighed. “It would be super to go. I mean, they have fires in the fireplace and neat games and yummy food. And all my best girl friends …”

  “I see no reason …” Morgan began. He changed his tactics. “Of course, we’d miss you terribly.”

  He saw Winnie’s lashes recognize tactics, and he winced to see it.

  “Why do you say you can’t go?” Rose had demanded. “If you are invited.”

  “I just won’t go,” said Winnie and now her eyes turned hot and sullen, “because Mom will first call up the Bassetts and ask a lot of insulting questions to see if they are reliable or something. And then she’ll keep calling me up long-distance in the middle of the party and everybody will think I’m either a baby or a criminal.” Winnie began to cry.

  Rose stared at her daughter.

  “Yes, you
will,” sobbed Winnie. “You always do, if I go anywhere. It’s too embarrassing. I’m seventeen and nobody else’s mother makes such a big deal.”

  Rose said wheedlingly, “But that’s no reason not to go.”

  “Yes, it is,” said Winnie, “and, unless you promise you won’t do that, I am not going.”

  Rose began to cry. Rose didn’t want to deprive Winnie of anything on earth but this hurt, this misunderstanding.

  Winnie said she couldn’t help it and she’d rather not go at all and she supposed it didn’t matter if she never went anywhere.

  Morgan Lake dared not counsel either of them. Rose was quite capable of turning on him in a blaze of temper and starting a flaming row that would resolve nothing. Winnie he perceived to be out on a limb, and if she did not win her point she really would not go. He couldn’t talk her into putting up with a few phone calls, not now.

  So all he could do was to remain calm. The tears flowed until Rose, lashing herself, finally gave the promise.

  Winnie said to Morgan, “You’ll see she keeps off the telephone, Dad?” The slightly slanted young eyes had been damp, yes … but also shrewd.

  “I’ll remind her,” he had said, soothingly.

  He had been trying ever since to believe that this clash was Winnie’s step toward independence, a step in the right direction. At least it was direct, and better than so much “handling.” But he was not sure, somehow. He felt depressed.

  He knew very well that Rose would fall into a state of gloom and uneasiness, and that whatever freedom Winnie won would be paid for directly out of Morgan’s peace. It wasn’t this that depressed him. He didn’t begrudge it.

  He tried to understand them and he did forgive them, but he could not seem to do anything constructive. If only he could talk to Rose, make her see that if she did not let Winnie go, then Winnie most certainly would go—and go forever some day. Or if he could only talk to Winnie, and try to make the girl see that because Rose was not quite normal in this frantic devotion, she could therefore be forgiven for it. But he felt he could not reach them, either one. In his own house, he was nothing but a buffer … and not always even that.