House Next Door Page 6

  Walter came and stood beside me, one arm around my shoulder.

  “What do you think?” I said.

  “You mean, do I think he’s shot his wad with this house? No. I think he’s young and he’s done one fantastic house and he’s practically scared himself to death with it. I mean, what do you do for an encore? He knows he’s got a hard act to follow and he’s choked up on it. I also think he’s feeling more than a little sorry for himself. Christ, everybody who’s creative goes through the same thing, but there’s no telling a novice that. Kim is a fine architect, but he’s got to learn to run on a mud track sometimes. Every house he does just can’t be as spectacular as that one.”

  “I think it can or he won’t do any more. I don’t think he’d settle for being just good. I almost think he would go sell carpets rather than not be able to do this again. Oh, Walter, I can’t stand it if this is his only house. It would kill him. And I don’t think he’s feeling sorry for himself at all. Kim doesn’t do that.”

  “It won’t be his only house, and it won’t kill him. And I think he is feeling sorry for himself. You spoil him to death, Col; you’ve gotten almost obsessed with him. I don’t understand it. It isn’t like you.”

  I stared at him and then out the den window. Walter had never talked like this before about any of the young men who had, over the years, become friends of mine. Many had. I’d always thought it was because I was able to offer rapport and easiness without the tiny, crackling undercurrent of sexuality that runs through most of the friendships women have with men. Nor did I think I was devoid of attraction for them. You can tell when that’s there, and I had always been able to transcend it, make the relationships both more than that and less. Any of my emotions that went past friendship went to Walter. I thought he took that as much for granted as I did.

  I looked deeper into myself, and back at the relationship with Kim. Was there anything in it of obsession? Anything of the delicate electricity I always banished from my other relationships with men? Anything at all that I might be concealing from myself? No. I knew there was not. I looked up at Walter.

  “Are you saying that you think there’s something between Kim and me?” I asked. “Because there isn’t. I shouldn’t even have to tell you that there isn’t. This isn’t like you, Walter. I really love Kim, but I thought you understood how I did. I thought you were fond of him too.”

  He sighed. “I do understand. I am fond of him. I really am. I don’t even know why I said that. I just don’t like to see you worrying so about him. You’re not his mother. You’re my middle-aged sex bomb. Come here and give me a big smooch, and we’ll go on from there.” I did. “Nobody says smooch anymore,” I said. “Nobody says sex bomb anymore.”

  “So my mind stopped in 1958. There’s nothing wrong with my pecker.”

  “Nobody says that anymore either.”

  Later, when I opened the back door to let Razz and Foster in, I saw a light bobbing in the darkness next door. It was a round disc of white light, and it swayed and skipped erratically over the ground, now playing across a swath of bare foundation, now plucking a piece of cypress siding out of the blackness, now dancing insanely over the red-rutted driveway. I stood very still and watched it. It disappeared, and then I saw it flickering like swamp fire through the black windows. I stared, uncomprehending and beginning to be frightened, and then I heard the front door slam and the unmistakable rumble of Buddy Harralson’s voice saying, “I don’t know where in the hell it could be. I’ll come over first thing in the morning and go over every inch of it. Jesus, I’m sorry.”

  There was an indistinguishable answering rumble, and I called out, “Anything wrong?”

  Buddy shone the flashlight toward me. “Colquitt? No. Luke’s missing his watch and thought it might have slipped off when we were over here this afternoon. But I can’t find it. Sorry if we scared you.”

  “Just for a minute,” I yelled back, beginning to be cold. “I thought you were a ha’nt.”

  “No ha’nts, Mrs. Kennedy,” and I heard Lucas Abbott’s voice for the first time. It was like the rest of him, mellow and modulated and cultivated. “Just a starving lawyer looking for his watch so he can pawn it.” He laughed. I liked his laugh. “I’m looking forward to meeting you people sometime soon,” he added across the black driveway.

  “Us too,” I called back. “Come on over for a drink next time the Harralsons drag you over to admire their house.” I thought that probably sounded sour and unneighborly, so I added hastily, “It’s a beautiful house.”

  “Isn’t it?” he said.

  “What was all that about?” Walter yelled down the stairs.

  “Just a starving lawyer looking for a watch to pawn,” I yelled back. “Do you want some of this Rocky Road here?”

  6

  THE NEXT WEEKEND March came in like the lion February had deluded us into thinking was sleeping. A black, killing frost stole in from some Canadian peak and blasted my camellias. The ground froze hard, turning the rutted driveway at the Harralsons’ into corrugated iron, and a high banshee wind sang in the treetops. We forewent our round of Saturday errands and I made a pot of split-pea soup and we ate it in the den, where Walter had lit a fire and turned on the TV to watch the Celtics and the Lakers. It was like being at sea, a wild sea, in the snug, warm cabin of a ship.

  Around midafternoon there was a rap on our back door and I uncoiled from beneath the sofa afghan and went to answer it. We were halfway expecting Kim Dougherty, but it was Pie and Buddy Harralson and Lucas Abbott who stood there, necks curled into shoulders against the freezing wind. They came gratefully into the kitchen, and a red tumble of puppy came with them on the end of a green leather leash, his nails skittering across the waxed tile.

  “Buddy said you invited us this time,” said Pie, giving me her ingenue’s smile. “When you saw him and Luke the other night, looking for Luke’s watch. I wanted him to meet the world’s best neighbors, and I wanted you to meet Casey. Isn’t he adorable?”

  I sighed inwardly, cursing my late-night, back-door chattiness, and led them into the den. The puppy preceded us, capering and sniffing and bounding, and when we entered the room he was sitting on Walter’s lap licking his face in an abandonment of ecstasy.

  “Company,” I said brightly, and Walter fondled the silky red ears and said, “We’ve just met. Hi, Harralsons.” He gave Lucas Abbott a questioning smile.

  “This is our friend and Buddy’s boss, Lucas Abbott,” said Pie, prodding him a little forward. “Call him Luke. Luke is a combination daddy-mentor to Buddy, and we just think he’s the greatest thing on earth. Colquitt and Walter Kennedy, Luke.”

  Lucas Abbott and Walter exchanged “What can you say?” grins over Pie’s bright head and Buddy turned his accustomed dark red.

  “Mentor hardly, and daddy I fervently hope not,” said Lucas Abbott in a deep Eastern drawl that spoke of prep schools and an Ivy League college. “He’s going to be a very good lawyer one of these days, and I’m pleased to have him in my bailiwick at the office. It’s good to meet you people. Pie talks of little else.”

  He was wearing a bronze tweed jacket over a rough turtleneck sweater, and I thought again how good-looking he was. There were brushes of pure silver in his thick chestnut hair, and he had a carved, high-planed face and gray eyes that reminded me of Kim’s. It was like being in the room with a celebrity or a personage of some sort; you’ve seen them in photographs and on film, but nothing prepares you for the sheer physical perfection. You can’t look away. In Lucas Abbott the impact was softened by his affable matter-of-factness and easy humor, and I decided that I liked him very much. He had the innate, unselfconscious dignity of a fine animal.

  “Who’s your friend?” Walter said to Pie, setting the puppy down on the rug and scratching under his chin. The puppy crouched and wriggled, and I knew I would have to get out the can of rug cleaner and erase the spot when they had gone.

  “This is Casey,” she said, gathering the puppy up in her arms, whe
re he wriggled and whimpered against her newly flat stomach. “Luke gave him to us for Christmas. Daddy always had setters, and I guess I went on so about them that he thought…I mean, it was just after the baby and all….”

  There was a small, thick silence. Buddy’s face tightened and Lucas Abbott looked distressed and remote. “What a lovely thing to do,” I said quickly. “He’s a love, isn’t he? I don’t know anything about setters, but he looks like a good one.”

  “He’s going to be a champion,” Pie squealed. “He’s got papers and all that stuff and bloodlines back to Adam and Eve practically. I could show him if I wanted to, Luke says, but I just hate the idea of all that training and making him do things he doesn’t want to do and having people stare at him in show rings. He’s just going to be my friend and stay with me while Buddy’s at work. Which is practically all the time.” She wrinkled her nose at Lucas Abbott, who smiled at her.

  “They need discipline,” he said. “You won’t be doing him a favor if you let him run wild. Setters are high-strung dogs. He’ll be the terror of the neighborhood if you don’t teach him some manners, and Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy will heap curses on my head daily.”

  “Hardly. I can’t answer for our cats, though,” I said. “Razz and Foster are already the terror of the neighborhood. I’ve seen them chase the Swansons’ schnauzer down the driveway in a full rout more than once. I don’t think you’ll have to worry about Casey, though. The street is crawling with dogs, and they all seem to coexist pretty well together.”

  I made a pot of coffee and brought out the cheese Danish left over from breakfast. The puppy fell into an abrupt, tumbled puppy sleep in front of the fire, where he twitched and whimpered occasionally. Lucas Abbott talked about his family back in Darien, of the sort of house he was trying to find for them. There was, in addition to his wife Anne, a married son and a daughter in her last year at Wellesley.

  “So I really have until summer to find something,” he said. “Anne will stay in Darien until she sells the house and Marty finishes school. I have specific instructions to look for something big and roomy and older, on a street just like this one. So far, nothing.”

  “Houses in close-in old neighborhoods like this one aren’t that easy to find,” I told him. “You generally have to wait until somebody dies. That sounds ghoulish, but I think people here check the obituaries before they look at the real estate section. I know some good agents I could put you in touch with, though.”

  “Thanks, I have all faith in the energetic young lady the firm found for me. I’m driving her bananas, but she’s unfailingly polite. You know, I’ve never liked contemporary stuff before, but since I’ve seen the Harralsons’ house, I’m almost tempted to rent something and get this young Dougherty of theirs to do one for us. In fact, I’ve talked to him about it.”

  “Oh?” Walter said noncommittally. Kim had not mentioned it.

  “He didn’t seem very interested. I don’t know if he disapproves of Yankees or what. He was polite, but that was about it.”

  “Oh, it couldn’t be that, Luke,” Pie put in. “He’s a Yankee himself. Massachusetts or somewhere. I’ll talk to him; I’m sure he’d—”

  “Do you get back home very often?” I asked Lucas Abbott, to divert her.

  “No,” he said. “I’m afraid I haven’t as much as I’d hoped, this winter. Christmas, of course, but the office is keeping me hopping. I’m in there almost every Saturday and Sunday.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Pie pouted. “I might as well be a divorcée for all I see Buddy. But I guess that’s the price I have to pay for having a successful husband. Luke has dinner with us almost every Saturday and Sunday night, though. This beautiful man, Colquitt, he even swears he likes my cooking. Can you imagine?”

  I couldn’t. Why would this cultivated man, so much older and obviously so far out of their league, want to spend his weekends with the utterly conventional young Harralsons? Pie’s chatter must drive him mad. Oh, well, I decided. He hasn’t had time to make many friends yet, and he must miss his family. They’re probably like his own children to him. I made a mental note to have a small dinner party soon and invite him. Minus the Harralsons. I thought he would like our friends. There was the same air of quiet and solidarity and substance there.

  “Come over to the house with us and see the wallpaper I picked out for our bedroom,” said Pie when they rose to leave. “Or rather, Luke picked it out. He says he didn’t, but we were over at the wallpaper place and he found this one book and said this pattern was something he’d like to wake up looking at, and when Buddy saw it, that was it. I was outvoted. And you know, it’s perfect.”

  I looked at Lucas Abbott. Wallpaper? He looked back at me and gave me a faint shrug and a half smile. “What can you say?” hung in the air again.

  We got coats and scarves and walked across the driveway and up the bank to the house. The puppy, unsnapped from his leash, bounded up into the yard and disappeared around the house. From somewhere out of sight he set up a frantic yipping, and then a dismal puppy howl. Buddy went around the corner of the house to see.

  In a moment he was back, the puppy in his arms. His face was rather white.

  “Don’t go around there Pie, Colquitt,” he said. “There’s a mother possum and her babies that have just been…torn apart. God! I never saw anything like that. There are just…pieces left. It looks like somebody took a chain saw—”

  Pie gave a small scream and clapped her hands to her mouth, and I stayed with her while the men went around to see. It upsets me to find dead things. Mashed squirrels and possums in the road give me unreasoning grief, as though I were responsible. I hate the intruding automobiles, the roads that my species has carved through their territory, ribbons of death. I even have brief moments of hating my own cats when they bring me maimed and bleeding chipmunks and birds. I know it is instinctive with them, but I hate it. Could Razz or Foster…? No. Their limit was chipmunks. And they did not tear or savage.

  The men came back looking disturbed and sickened. Walter got a shovel from our basement and buried the possums at the edge of the woods, deeply, so that dogs would not be attracted. We walked the Harralsons and Lucas Abbott to the gray Mercedes, subdued and upset.

  “Could a dog do a thing like that?” Buddy Harralson asked. “I never saw such a mess. God, I hope for Casey’s sake that there aren’t any dogs around who would—”

  “No,” Walter said. “I know all the dogs in this neighborhood and none of them would do anything like that. I doubt if any dog could. Certainly not a cat. I suppose there could be a wild pack around in the woods somewhere, but we’ve never had any trouble with wild dogs before. I’ll keep a lookout, though. Col, we’d better keep Razz and Foster inside for a day or two until we can tell if there’s anything around.”

  Something was, even though we never saw it. The next week Kim found a nest of very young birds tumbled from one of the trees and slaughtered. The pulped body of the mother lay nearby.

  “I couldn’t even tell what kind of birds they were,” he told us that evening. “I’d suspect one of your fuzzy friends here, except they looked like something heavy had just…smeared them. One of the painters told me he’s found chipmunks or something in the same condition two or three times, laid on the back steps like something had drug them there. Little ones, babies. Have you ever seen any really wild things back in those woods? Something—oh, bigger than a raccoon, even. Heavy.”

  “God, no,” Walter said. “Those woods are dense, but they only go over to the next street. There couldn’t be anything savage back in there, not this close to town. And I’ve been looking out for roving dogs, and I haven’t seen any at all that I don’t know as well as their owners. Forget Razz and Foster. They won’t go near the house or the lot.”

  “It just makes me sick,” I said. “That beautiful house, and all those little things that live in those woods. I hate the idea that something is…stalking around over there. It’s not natural, somehow. And I’m afraid it’s go
ing to spoil the house for Pie and Buddy. You too.”

  “It’s already spoiled for me,” Kim said flatly. “It looks like it was my swan song. That doesn’t exactly make me love it.”

  “Things still going badly?” I asked. He had not been over in the evenings for the past week or two, though a couple of times I had seen him standing in the yard gazing up at the Harralson house, in the twilight, when the workmen had gone. Just standing, hands in the pockets of his old windbreaker, and looking. As if he were memorizing the house, stone by stone and board by board. I’d thought that he would come on over to our house and had not called out to him, but when he did not appear and I looked again, he was gone. I had hoped his absence meant that the dam had burst and he was working again.

  “Things could not be worse, Colquitt,” he said. “I’ve turned the Douglas house and the rest of the design work over to Frank. Not that there’s that much of it. He’s brought in a couple of new things, but nothing he can’t handle. I’m going to finish up on the Douglas site—I can still supervise a crew even if I can’t design—and then I think I might split for a while.”

  “Oh, Kim, no!” I stared at him. He was thinner, and his eyes were shadowed underneath. He looked gnawed at, eroded. My heart turned over with helpless pain and love. I wondered why I had not noticed before—but, then, we had not seen him for a while.

  “Where would you go?” Walter did not protest. I wondered with a brief flare of anger if he might be glad, and then decided that perhaps he understood Kim better than I. He had always brushed my sympathy aside.

  “Nowhere for a while, I’ve got a good six months on the Douglas site. But, you know, I’ve never been to Europe? Can you imagine, in this day and age? I always had summer construction jobs—the old man insisted on it. Said if I was going to be an architect, I better know how to build better than hell. And I do—I can flat build. Maybe when I’m done with the Douglases I’ll take a few months off and do the grand tour. I can sell out to Frank. My half of the business isn’t worth crap anyway. It would be enough for a cracking good fall abroad. Or, hell, the old man would spring for it. Though I’m not going to ask him. How about it, Col? Paris in the winter, when it drizzles?”