Magnificence: A Novel Part 16

"Listen," he said, and looked down again at the white wave hovering beneath his chin. "I really need to get going to the office. It's halfway through the day already."

"So go, so go," she said, and smiled at him as the lady drinking lemonade kept standing there, clueless.

He loved his wife, she thought as he left the kitchen, or rather his ex-wife, now; he loved her and he always would. In this house there was unrequited love and there was love of the dead. She and Jim cherished these two streams of affection, at once different and the same: they lived inside two loves that went out and did not come back to them.

Casey had decided to send faxes instead of letters. Airmail from Borneo took too long, she wrote, while faxes were instant.

She had them sent to the machine in T.'s office, and Susan would come in on good mornings to find their curled pages waiting for her, thin and slick, some of them always fallen or fan-blown to the floor. The pages had no numbers, typically, only long disorderly paragraphs of Casey's barely legible scrawl interspersed with !!! and ??? so often she had to piece them together painstakingly, the last word of one to the first word of the next, before she could begin to read.

At first the places and even the facts seemed purely fict.i.tious.

From here in Long Banga to the clear-cuts in Gulung Mulu . . .

On the way we stopped in what claims to be "Berkeley's sister city": Uma Baw.a.n.g.

Among the Penan of Upper Baram, murder, rape, and robbery are unknown. Selfishness is considered a crime.

After a few letters she stopped grinning reflexively every time she encountered a foreign word. It wasn't funny, of course. Indeed the current events Casey described were alarming: episodes of police brutality, conflicts between the natives and the logging companies, the wholesale liquidation of primary forests, the erosion of mountaintops and ma.s.sacre of wildlife. But there was also the day-to-day, and Casey included rough, childish sketches of the local fauna, as though they might be added, by proxy, to Susan's collection.

She started with a mount that hung in a tourist lodge near the research station, a civet cat, and then moved on to living subjects. There was a male proboscis monkey with a huge dangling nose like an ancient drunkard, beneath which she had written The big nose is thought to be attractive to females; there was a pangolin, a distant anteater relative, with the legend Talk about freaks. The monkey had its dangling, pear-shaped nose, then also a large potbelly and beneath that a small red p.e.n.i.s sticking out. Susan knew the color because Casey had drawn an arrow toward the offending organ and written red.

Next there were drawings of people, women with earlobes stretched all the way down to their chests, heavy earrings pulling down the impossibly long holes-six inches, seven or eight. Orang Ulu, wrote Casey. An ancient man with boar's teeth piercing the tops of his ears: Village elder, Bungan festival in Punan Sama.

Casey rarely wrote about herself or her feelings except to mention a casual fact briefly: Our shower is a bag of water with holes in it. Or I do miss the junk food. And Sucks to do laundry once a month. Still her daughter was close there, in the unkempt script and the abrupt turns of thoughts-in some ways closer than when she was home.

Susan h.o.a.rded the faxed letters. She read them to remind herself of the realness and texture of Casey whenever she felt afraid. One foreign place was not the same as all others; Casey would not fall under a knife. She kept the pages stapled, smoothed flat, although they wanted to curl, and pressed between two big dictionaries she carried up to her bedroom from the library.

But they did not last. She was distressed to notice how quickly the ink faded.

One afternoon she got home after a half-day at the office to find Angela leading some church ladies through the second-floor rooms, pointing out both the taxidermy and the house's architectural features.

"The building has been nominated for historic status," she said proudly, as Susan hovered in the hallway.

There was a message from the estate lawyer in Century City, whom Jim had pushed to give her case more attention: a date had been set for the adjudication of the cousins' will contest. She felt her stomach sink when she heard this-did that mean the case had not been dismissed, or something, as they had hoped it would? Or could it still be dismissed?

Jim would explain when he got in, she told herself, and went outside to where the church ladies were picking their way through the back garden, gazing down into the fishponds and nodding. Angela had her arm around one of them-the white-haired one from the kitchen, hobbling unsteadily.

Worried about the will, hoping for some distraction, Susan hurried toward them, on a path to overtake. As she came up behind the last in the group-an imperious fat lady in red and gold and another, in gray, who looked timid and thin by contrast-the white-hair with Angela stumbled and emitted a gasp of fright.

"You're all right, Ellie dear," said Angela, whose arm had stopped her from falling. "You'll be fine."

"Tripped me," said the lady.

"Let's see," said Susan.

In the pebbly soil between the flagstones of the path, at the white-haired lady's feet, was a thin piece of black tubing.

"Part of the irrigation system," said Susan.

"It's unsafe," said Angela.

Susan gazed at her.

"It waters my garden," she said after a pause, irritably.

"This way, honey," murmured Angela, but she gave Susan a punitive look.

When Jim came over after work three of the ladies were still present, in Oksana's room off the entrance hall. It was almost six-thirty in the evening and they had never left; they sat there in armchairs and, as far as Susan could tell, said hardly anything. There was the oldest-the white-haired lady-and the slight one in gray and the large one bedecked in the colors of the Chinese emperors. They each had a copy of a Christian novel nearby; this one featured a handsome angel who flew down to earth to help a single mother with a crippled child, then fell in love with her. A couple of them even had drinks beside them. The conversation appeared to be moving with exceeding slowness.

When Susan and Jim came to stand in the doorway Angela was telling the plot of the novel. The other ladies ignored them.

"The angel starts out too proud, you see," said Angela, and turned to Susan. "You see, the angels that come down to help people are often the proud ones. G.o.d gives them penance. Having to come down from heaven is a punishment for them."

In a corner, Oksana painted her fingernails fire-engine red and watched her small television. On the news, someone was dead.

"I mean it, they're not moving," whispered Susan to Jim, as they veered away from Oksana's door and down the hall to the bar area where they liked to drink their dinnertime c.o.c.ktails. "They've been here since like ten a.m. It's like they've been installed. Like furniture."

"But you can't sit on them," said Jim.

She poured him some scotch.

"The lawyer left a message for me," she told him. "He said they set a court date. Is that bad?"

"It's neutral. Look, wills get contested all the time. But will contests are hardly ever won by the people who bring the objection. Keep that in mind."

"I was hoping maybe it wouldn't even make it to court, though," she said.

"I'll go with you. Don't think about it."

As the evening wore on she and Jim grew fixated on the question of when the old ladies would leave. When ten, then eleven o'clock rolled around both of them were making trips down the hall so that they could walk past Oksana's open door and see whether the ladies were still there. Then Jim would return or Susan would return to him, shaking their heads in disbelief. Susan was aware of acting vulture-like. The truth was it shouldn't matter to her-the ladies were quiet and infringed upon no one but Oksana-but she was intrigued by the unlikeliness of the ladies' presence, of their remaining in the room as though they were frozen there, as though they were inevitable.

Finally it was eleven and Susan hovered in Oksana's doorway like a parent executing a curfew.

"Let me run something up the flag," she said. "Maybe Jim or I could drive you ladies home tonight? Because night driving can be dangerous-"

"Oh no, dear," said Angela. "No no no. We're having a slumber party!"

The faces turned to her then, all three of the visitors staring. Oksana continued to ignore them and ignored Susan too, eyes fixed on a late-night talk show on the television. Susan noticed she had put on a nightgown.

"A slumber . . ."

"Oh yes. We're sleeping in my room."

Was Angela lucid?

"Oh," said Susan uncertainly. "Ladies? Is that . . ."

They seemed to be nodding, though it was almost imperceptible in the dimness of the room. It struck her as absurd-either a comedy of errors or a group mania of some kind. They had to be in their late seventies and eighties; they must need comfortable beds, she thought, need their routine, their home environments; they must all have some complaint, minor or not, arthritis, bursitis, porous and brittle bones. There was no way they could intend to sleep in Angela's bed, no way they could have made that plan on their own. Had Angela misled them about the facilities? Had they been fed? Was she even taking care of them?

"If you're staying, please use the bedrooms on the second floor," Susan said finally. "OK? There are plenty of beds up there. Most have their own bathrooms, though some share. Jim will be happy to help you up the stairs, if any of you needs a hand. Because frankly I can't imagine you'll all be comfortable in Angela's room. There's only the one bed in there! You realize that, don't you?"

"Upstairs will be quite suitable," said Angela, with a certain smugness.

"But then the staircase is hazardous too, or at least it could be," objected Susan, recalling the white-haired lady-Ellen, she guessed-tripping on the small piece of black tubing.

"Young lady," said the portly dowager in red, turning in her armchair with sudden severity, "you know, we may be getting on, but we're certainly not deceased yet."

"Oh no, I didn't-" started Susan, but Jim interrupted from behind her.

"Oksana," said Jim, "why don't you come and get me when these ladies want to go upstairs. Or, of course, when you'd like to go to bed yourself. I'll be glad to accompany them." He looked at the imperious one. "No offense intended, madam. I'm a lawyer by trade. I'm thinking purely of our liability here as homeowners. Or call it responsibility. A broken hip could be costly."

With the ladies staring at him Susan withdrew and he followed.

"I can't believe you said that," she whispered.

"Angela's taking advantage of you," he said. "She should have asked first. It's bulls.h.i.+t."

"I mean, she does have dementia," said Susan.

"She's also manipulative."

It was almost midnight when Oksana came to get them, with tired eyes and traces of cold cream on her cheeks. Jim went to escort the women upstairs while Susan got towels out of the linen closet and sorted them into groups, a bath towel, hand towel and washcloth for each lady, and then carried them up the narrow back stairs formerly used by servants.

She went to the rooms and laid the towels out-a small pile each on the twin beds of the Arctic and another on the queen bed in the Himalayas-before meeting the guests in the upstairs hallway, where they stood with Jim under the dome. After they had shown them to the rooms, walking back to their own, she stopped Jim with a hand on his arm.

"I murdered Hal," she said. "I killed him. You should know that about me."

In the morning she went into the bright kitchen happy because Jim had been kind to her, Jim understood that she had killed and though maybe forgive wasn't the word, he saw and didn't give up on her. She came down in a good mood and found them seated around the table, four ladies in nightdresses with gleaming fish overhead, eating toast with marmalade and listening to some kind of quaint homily about daily life: National Public Radio. Angela had made breakfast for them, even brewed them a carafe of her weak, stale coffee from a can, which she preferred to Susan's gourmet beans.

Angela was animated, rising to get them fresh toast as it popped up in the toaster, and Susan saw she had been changed by their presence: the older ones made her energetic, gave her a central role, bustling around. But surely she couldn't sustain it, Susan thought, she'd have to absent herself again or even perform a broadly insane act, such as stripping naked or locking herself in a room. Then the ladies would quietly take their leave.

Jim had gone off to the office so it was only Susan and the ladies; her kitchen felt crowded. She spooned up some yogurt, drank a half-cup of the weak coffee and then went outside and crossed quickly to the shed in the backyard, where she chose a shovel from the dirt-encrusted fleet of them propped up against a shelf. Backhoe, she thought, wasn't that overkill anyway? She could find out what was beneath the manhole without the help of large earth-moving machines. Of course she could.

On the shelf beside the shovels she found an old, dusty gray pair of gloves, shook them in case there were spiders or splinters in the finger holes and then pulled them on. Last time she'd tried to wield a shovel she'd rubbed blisters on her palms and torn them open. A kind of water had flowed out when they ripped: was that pus? But it had been light-transparent, inoffensive.

We know so little of our molecules, she thought, the molecules we are . . . so little about them. A proof they're in control: they guide our hands, they make us grow, they form our children inside our bodies-miracles come from them, all that has ever been, all that will be. Meanwhile our conscious selves perform their rudimentary acts, those simple sums. What shall I be, whom shall I love: those are the easy parts, behaviors that we call ourselves, they're only icing, floral borders, all that we think we are is trivial while what we really are is not even known to us. If there is a machine, a ghost in the machine-they always said the machine was the body, didn't they? Philosophers?-but no! The body's both of them, machine and ghost. The body's not only the vessel but also its spirit, the body is visible but its animators impossible to see. Materialism, she thought, sure-she might be a proponent. But she didn't like the flatness of answers, the stolid and dull arithmetic of being, not at all! Rather the glory of the unseen. She believed in the ineffable, great mystery, great creation, only that it was lodged in molecules, in molecules, beyond the human ability to see.

The final authority of the microscopic.

She carried the shovel into the back, through the trees, stuck its blade into the ground a few inches from the manhole and then stood on it with one foot. She hopped awkwardly to sink it further, then dismounted, scooped and flung. And again. It was hard, boring work and soon she was dizzy and distracted. As the minutes pa.s.sed she felt blisters starting on her hands again despite the gloves, felt dirt down the backs of her sneakers and in between her toes, and just as she was thinking how tedious it was the spade hit underground metal.

"Well of course," said someone, and she looked up to see the elderly dominatrix, now clad not in the red and gold ensemble of yesteryear or her ruffled nightgown from the breakfast hour but in a voluminous dress of deep and vibrant purple. Around her neck hung a crescent-moon pendant in silver, vaguely redolent of Wicca or perhaps the New Age.

Were there obese Wiccans?

"Of course what?" asked Susan, out of breath.

"You've hit the shaft."

"I didn't know there'd be one," said Susan. She stood resting, catching her breath. What a stupid idea, digging. Of course some Wiccans were obese. Sure-even morbidly so. No different from other Americans, most likely. One of Casey's best friends in high school had been Wiccan. She wors.h.i.+ped the moon G.o.ddess, the feminine principle, and told Casey not to use tampons. She advised Casey only to use sea sponges when she had her period. The use of tampons was a denial of the sacred nature of womanhood. The tampons were the patriarchy. Sponges by contrast came from the ocean, which some viewed as feminine. And also by contrast with the tampons, manufactured by companies that men owned and designed to men's specifications, the sponges were not shaped like p.e.n.i.ses or missiles.

But with sponges you had to wash the blood off in the sink.

Susan had run interference. She spoke of practical benefits. After the accident Casey lost touch with the Wiccan friend, who went to college and presently joined the Young Republicans.

Susan squinted at the purple-clad woman and tried to imagine her dancing at midnight before an altar to the horned G.o.d.

"You think it goes deep?" she asked.

"Too deep to tackle with that thing. Don't make me laugh. It's probably solid iron. You could be talking twenty feet deep."

"I'm sorry," said Susan. They'd never been properly introduced. "I'm not sure I even know your name! I'm Susan, Susan Lindley."

She stepped forward and stuck out a gloved hand, which the large woman took and pressed lightly. She wasn't without grace, Susan thought. Around her own mother's age, if her mother were still alive-older than Angela by almost a generation but clearly far more coherent.

"Portia," she said.

"Porsche?"

"No, not the sportscar," said the woman haughtily. "The moon of Ura.n.u.s, for instance, discovered by Voyager 2. I myself predate the Voyagers by several decades, needless to say. I was, like the moon, named after the heroine of The Merchant of Venice, if you knew your Shakespeare. All of the Ura.n.u.s moons are named after characters in Shakespeare. And Pope, of course."

"I don't know my Shakespeare or my planetary trivia," said Susan. "How many Ura.n.u.s moons are there?"

"Perhaps you recognize this line: 'The quality of mercy is not strain'd. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, upon the place beneath.' Sound familiar?"

"It does. The gentle rain part. Definitely."

"That line's Portia's."

"I'm glad to meet you, Portia."

"About the moon," went on Portia, lifting the too-large necklace off her chest, "little is known."

"I see."

"And to answer your question: there are twenty-seven."

"Many moons."

They were gazing at each other. Susan realized she tended to like the woman, found a kind of rea.s.surance in the woman's pompous presence.