A Secret Rage & Sweet and Deadly, page 4
For the benefit of the bee, I suppose, I glanced down at my watch and stepped out a little faster.
* * * *
The immense double doors set in the center of the ground floor led into a vaulted central cloister, cool and very dark after the glare outside. As I peered through the dimness, searching for some sign of stairs to the second floor, I wondered if the original Houghton architect had toured medieval monasteries right before he’d been commissioned for the job.
There were halls leading off to the right and left; they were empty. After some fruitless searching, I became absurdly frantic. Where the hell had they hidden the stairs? I wasn’t going to impress Dr Barbara Tucker if I turned up late. I took a few tentative steps forward, peering from side to side. My wooden heels made little tap! tap! echoes on the stone floor. The building was quite silent otherwise.
To my heartfelt relief, one of the enigmatic doors in the corridor to my right opened. A man came out and walked in my direction. (I’d been quite prepared to bellow for help if he’d turned the opposite way.) As he drew nearer, I saw he was about thirty-eight, with a slight belly preceding his legs and a tonsure fringed by blond curly hair.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, louder than I’d intended.
He jumped. I felt embarrassed.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked politely, after he’d located me in the gloom.
‘You’re going to think I’m awfully stupid, but I just can’t find the stairs.’ I winced. I was simpering. I hadn’t simpered for years.
He laughed and came closer. I could make out a patrician nose and the slight suggestion of a double chin. I mentally prescribed laying off the sweets and starches for a few months.
‘I think the architect wanted to hide something as mundane as stairs,’ he said. ‘I’m Theo Cochran, the registrar. Don’t feel stupid. I tell an average of twenty people a year where the stairs are. There, see?’ He pointed to the right. After a second, I was just able to discern the balustrade. It was composed of the same stone as the wall, and blended into it perfectly in the pervasive gloom.
‘Oh,’ I said flatly. ‘Well . . . thanks a lot.’ Come on, Nick, manners. ‘I’m Nickie Callahan. You probably just processed my transcript.’
‘Oh. Mimi Houghton’s friend.’
Distinct lack of enthusiasm. Having an influential friend is not always a plus.
Theo Cochran stirred himself, probably remembering that influence. ‘We’re glad to have you with us here at Houghton, Miss Callahan.’
‘Thank you,’ I said again. ‘I’m sure I’ll be in and out of your office in the next week or so.’
‘So will the entire student body. The first week is always hell,’ the registrar said more pleasantly. He seemed to look forward to hurling himself into the fray. ‘Goodbye, now.’
‘Goodbye.’ I started climbing the stairs, my heels clattering. I resolved to remember to wear rubber-soled shoes to classes in this building.
I looked down the stairwell and saw the bare tonsure of the registrar moving away down the hall into the darkness. His progress was relatively silent. He must have made the same resolution.
It was impossible for me to blunder any more, since room 206 was just a few feet to the right at the head of the stairs. I checked my watch again. On the dot. I twitched my skirt and gathered myself in general.
‘Come in,’ called a midwestern voice after I knocked.
‘I’m Barbara Tucker,’ said a slim auburn-haired woman as she rose from behind a desk covered with every imaginable form of printed material: books, notebooks, forms, memoranda, catalogues. I blinked. The office seemed dazzling with light after the cavern below.
‘Nickie Callahan,’ I said too heartily. I shook Barbara Tucker’s hand and took the only scarred wooden chair that wasn’t overflowing with books and papers.
The woman sat down, pushed her glasses up on her slight nose, and smiled at me. Her features were plain, but her skin was beautiful. I decided I liked her on the spot. I liked her smile, I liked the books stacked everywhere, I liked the plants that flourished in the two slitlike windows. I beamed back at Barbara Tucker in approval. There are some women who dislike and distrust me at first sight, on principle. She was not going to be one of them.
‘So, you decided to leap back into the academic battle, Miss Callahan.’
‘Call me Nickie. I decided it would be a good idea to finish, and the time was right.’
‘Good decision. I remember Mimi told me you were a model, but I think I would have figured that out anyway.’
I had to make it clear I was not a dilettante. ‘I used to be a model,’ I said carefully. ‘Now, I hope, I’m an English major.’
‘Okay, we’ll start you on the road to a degree today,’ Barbara Tucker said briskly. She pulled my file from a crammed metal tray. ‘What’s your goal? Do you want to teach?’
I took a deep breath and plunged. ‘No, I’m going to be a writer,’ I said, and couldn’t stop myself from making a deprecating face.
Barbara brushed back her bangs and looked thoughtful. She didn’t ask me how I planned to eat and pay the rent on a writer’s erratic earnings; and she didn’t laugh. She did smile again, suddenly. ‘You’ll be the Don Quixote of the English department,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you started.’
For forty-five minutes we went over the hours I’d accumulated at my first college and made out a list of courses I wanted and courses I was required to take as an English major – certainly not a synonymous list. Finally we hammered out a schedule I thought I just might be able to handle.
But I kept reminding myself I’d been over six years away from the academic routine. As Barbara signed forms, I blew out a sigh of relief and apprehension.
‘You’re certainly going to be an interesting addition to the student body,’ Barbara commented cheerfully.
‘Does Houghton have many older students?’ I asked.
‘Not that many, but you’ll have some company, don’t worry. And the older students we do have almost always make higher grades than the average-age student. They seem to have a better idea of why they’re going to college.’
That was heartening. I wondered again how it was going to feel, seeing those nineteen-year-old faces surrounding me. ‘I’ll probably be a mother figure,’ I said ruefully.
Barbara whooped. ‘Believe me, Nickie,’ she gasped. ‘No one is going to think of you as a mother figure.’
‘What’s all the merriment?’ asked a voice behind me. I started, then twisted in the chair to look.
A man had stuck his head through the gap left by the partially open door. Now he looked as though he felt extremely foolish. ‘I’m sorry, Barbara, I didn’t know you had anyone in here,’ he apologized.
‘Come all the way in, Stan, and meet Houghton’s newest sophomore-and-a-half,’ Barbara invited.
The man smiled a little shyly and edged into the room. He was a few years older than Barbara, whom I’d placed at around thirty-five. His neat brown beard was well salted with white and his face was seamed. He managed to look comfortable with himself.
As Barbara performed introductions (his full name was Dr Stanley Haskell), I got the firm impression that the two were a couple. They shared the ease that comes of intimacy and long association; and Barbara seemed not the least disturbed when his eyes stayed glued to me.
They were obviously going out for lunch together. I quickly thanked Barbara for her time and gathered up my papers. Since Dr Haskell was going to be instructing me in Chaucer (at eight o’clock Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays), I told him I’d see him in class and took my departure, my heels tap-tapping again down the stairs.
As I pulled the Chevrolet cautiously out of the parking lot, I spotted the two English professors at a stoplight at the edge of the campus. They were laughing. The sun was shining. I beamed idiotically to myself. Ah, love!
Mimi’s narrow driveway led around to the back of the house, where it formed a wide apron, affording room to turn around; but she’d asked me to leave the car out front, since she meant to use it. I parked across the street from the house. The yard sloped up from the sidewalk, so I had to climb steps up to the yard, and then more steps up to the wide porch that girdled three sides of the house.
Panting a little from the heat and the stairs, sweating like a pig, I flung open the front door with that silly smile still pasted on my face – and there stood Cully.
. . . I was fourteen again. A tall, thin, black-headed boy, a lofty senior in high school, slipped into the chair opposite mine at the Houghtons’ dining table. Hazel eyes summed me up and dismissed me.
‘This is Mimi’s brother, Cully,’ Elaine Houghton had said proudly. Mimi kicked me because I was gaping like a fool. I was abruptly sick, stricken with first love; and those light-brown eyes with little green streaks were utterly cool when they rested on me . . .
Mimi wasn’t in the living room to kick me now, so I did the job myself – mentally, of course. Cully’s eyes were just as cool now, though the rest of him had changed a little. He was still very tall and too slender, but a little gray streaked the black hair of his head and mustache. There were a few wrinkles at the corners of those eyes. His cheekbones and arched nose jutted a little more sharply; the parentheses from nose to mouth were deeper.
‘Hello, Nickie,’ that mouth said calmly.
‘Hi,’ I said, and slung my notebook down on one of the couches. ‘Where’s Mimi?’ Charm and grace, that’s me.
‘She and Alicia Merritt are in the kitchen planning the party.’
‘Alicia! What party?’
‘Your party,’ he said, and relaxed enough to smile faintly.
Now that was interesting. Cully had been very tense.
‘Mimi just decided she wanted to celebrate your arrival and have a housewarming at the same time,’ he continued.
We stood in uneasy silence for a moment.
‘By the way . . .’ He hesitated for an awkward length of time, and I stared. Cully always knew what he wanted to say. ‘I’m sure coming back here fitted in with your plans, but I’m glad you did come back to town and move in with Mimi,’ he finished.
Surely not for the sake of my beaux yeux.
The slap and the stroke, or the stroke and the slap. Cully had never said an unmitigated thing to me in our whole acquaintance. I’m sure you came back to Knolls for your own, doubtless selfish, reasons, but I’m also glad it’s what my sister wanted and needed.
One thing I could say for Cully – he’d always adored Mimi, and the feeling was mutual. Now, I decided, Cully was angling toward something. But I wasn’t going to bite.
Things had never, never been simple between us.
‘I’m glad too,’ I said briefly. ‘Now when, and where, is this party going to be?’
‘Friday night, here. I’m going to bartend.’
‘I’m glad to hear that,’ I said sincerely. Mimi had never mixed a decent drink in her life. Then my mind started racing. Friday was two days away. Some of our moving boxes were still strewn through the house. I was itching to make a list of things that had to be done. I began rummaging through my purse for a pencil and a pad.
‘Listen, as long as we’re alone . . .’ Cully began, capturing my undivided attention.
‘Yes?’ I fixed my eyes on his. That usually either frightens men or inflames them. One of my photographers, a romantic, had said that my eyes were exactly like opals – a compliment that had pleased me no end, of course.
Just as a little voice inside me was protesting that I had promised to stop using my face as bait – and I’d told that little voice to shut up – Cully went on: ‘I want you to watch out for Mimi.’
I was back in the real world, with a thud.
‘I’ll tell you something in confidence—’ He broke off as Alicia Merritt and Mimi blew into the living room.
I had to jump and scream and embrace Alicia in the accepted fashion. If I’d done less, she would have thought I wasn’t happy to see her. Alicia was refreshingly the same, her accent still one of the heaviest I’d ever heard. Her voice dripped magnolias and molasses. When she exclaimed ‘You sweet thing!’ the product sounded like ‘Yew sweeet thang!’ I held our former schoolmate at arm’s length to take a survey.
‘You look great, Alicia,’ I said. And I meant it.
Her short hair was more golden than God had made it, and curlier; but her figure was definitely her own, and still tempting as a ripe peach. Alicia had the happy face and assured manner of someone who has seldom in life denied herself an impulse – someone who has pretty nice impulses, that is.
‘How’s Ray?’ I asked, when I decided we’d gushed enough. Mimi beamed in the background.
‘Oh, he’s just fine, Nickie. He still has that same old job, though, and he’s on the road all week. At least he comes back home on the weekends. I’m glad I’m not the jealous type!’
‘You don’t have anything to worry about,’ I assured her.
‘Oh, I’m fat as a butterball,’ Alicia protested untruthfully. ‘And you’re still long and thin and totally gorgeous. It must be staying single that does it.’
I’d forgotten Alicia’s little needles, the way you tend to forget little faults in otherwise nice people. For a second, this little barb almost got to me. I was off guard and back in the ambience of girlhood, and I actually found myself defensively totting up the proposals I’d received. Shame! If I’d been alone, I would’ve slapped myself for my regression. As it was, I had to clamp my mouth shut: I had been on the verge of retorting, ‘Oh, Alicia, I’m just so picky!’
‘Where are you all living now?’ I said instead, and promised myself something nice for my restraint. Earrings?
‘Didn’t Mimi tell you?’ Alicia gave Mimi a look of mock reproach. ‘We bought the house two doors down from here, the other side of Mrs Harbison, oh I guess about a year ago. So I’ll get to see a lot of you! When I have a second, that is,’ she added, to my relief.
‘Are you still in every club in town?’
‘And on a bunch of college committees, too. Got to support the old alma mater, and I have to do something while Ray’s gone!’
Alicia’s energy was something of a legend. Underneath all the gush and flutter, which apparently she found necessary to assume, Alicia was actually a very efficient woman. Mimi had told me that in college Alicia had invariably made the dean’s list. But if Ray’s fraternity brothers mentioned that achievement to her, she would blink and giggle and tell them it must have been a fluke.
‘You know,’ our old friend was saying now with a great display of roguery, ‘Mimi was on every board at Houghton, and they finally gave up and started paying her for it. I’m just hoping that some day this town will give me a salary for running it!’
‘You sure deserve it,’ I murmured. I was tiring already. It had been a long time since I’d met Alicia broadside.
‘Ray and I are going to start working on a baby,’ she told us cheerfully. ‘He says that’ll keep me at home, if nothing else will. He thought buying our own house would do that too. But you know, I had the whole thing done over in no time.’
‘I don’t doubt it for a minute,’ Cully said with a smile that robbed his words of any sting.
Alicia looped her purse straps over her shoulder and moved to the door. ‘Nick, I’m just thrilled to death you’re back in town to stay. We’ll see you at the party Friday night. Ray’ll be back in time, and we’ll be here with bells on. You call me, Mimi, you hear? If you need any help!’
All at once she was gone, leaving us standing in a daze, as if a tornado had passed close by.
‘Still the same,’ Mimi said with a grin of half-admiration, half-regret.
I nodded. ‘What’s all this about a party?’
‘Oh, just some people you met when you used to stay with me, and some of the people from the college,’ she said smoothly.
‘Like the entire English faculty?’ I asked with suspicion.
‘Oh, don’t worry! Just the ones I really know and like. I’m not trying to butter anyone up for you.’
‘Oh. Okay,’ I said, feeling some doubt. ‘When is this going to be? What kind of party?’
‘It kicks off at eight, and from the length of the bar list, it’s going to be a drunken brawl,’ Cully interposed. ‘Listen, Mimi, are you sure this is everything you need from the store?’
A list I hadn’t gotten to make. I eyed it sadly. Then I realized that Cully was going to the grocery for us, and I felt a jolt of amazement. I just couldn’t imagine Cully Houghton doing something as tedious and universal as wheeling a cart through the supermarket to buy groceries. It occurred to me that I had perhaps been idealizing Cully a wee bit all these years.
‘I’m sure,’ Mimi said firmly. ‘Listen, are you sure you’ve got the bar list?’
‘Right here.’ He pulled the edge of another list from his pants pocket to prove it to her.
‘Good. Thanks, Cully, that’ll save us time. We’ve got to get cracking on cleaning up this house, and we’ll have plenty for you to haul off to the dump, starting tomorrow.’
‘Maybe I should try to borrow Charles’s pickup?’
‘Good idea. Drop by his office and see if he’ll need it. Generally he just uses it on weekends.’
There was a little something about the way Mimi smoothed her hair . . .
‘Charles?’ I asked, after Cully had left.
‘Oh, you’ll meet him at the party. I’ve known him forever,’ Mimi said nonchalantly.
Right. Uh-huh. Here we go again.
But I swore to myself I wouldn’t say anything. Mimi was always prickly in the first stages of any attachment. There are some lines even a best friend – or especially a best friend – shouldn’t cross. I’d upset Mimi in the past with my criticism of her choice of men, before I’d gotten wiser. That was why Mimi was being so clamlike with me now.
