Sharyn McCrumb - Sick Of Shadows

Alban and Carlsen Shepherd were hunched over the table amidst a pile of papers. Shepherd was scribbling furiously on a small note pad, and Alban was saying, “I’ve been Ludwig of Bavaria for about four years now, and on the whole-”

“Oh, excuse me!” she blurted out. “I’ll go.”

Shepherd looked up and smiled. “No, it’s all right. Come on in. Nothing important. You’re welcome to sit in.”

Elizabeth tried to sort things out in her mind. Alban had “been” Ludwig of Bavaria-should she stay and hear the whole story or run? And why should she be permitted to sit in on a medical consultation?

“But-what about your psychiatrists’ rule about patient confidentiality?” she stammered. Surely they weren’t really going to allow her to listen to a description of Alban’s reincarnation delusions.

They stared at her, letting the question sink in. Shepherd’s face lit up in sudden comprehension, and he roared with laughter. “Patient confidentiality! Well, now you know what your family thinks of you, Cobb!”

Alban grinned. “I think I worried Elizabeth a bit this morning by mentioning reincarnation.”

Elizabeth wished they would stop laughing at her and start making sense. “Will you please tell me what is going on here?”

They exchanged smirks. “We’re discussing a war game, Cousin,” said Alban. “It’s called Diplomacy. Ever heard of it?”

“Only in connection with Camp David,” she sighed. “A game? You’re playing a game? You just met!” She might have known it would turn out to be another batty family hobby. The fact that Shepherd was familiar with it did not surprise her in the least, once she considered the matter.

“Well, we’ve been playing in separate games-separate wars, even, because Alban’s game is a Prussian variant, but we still have a lot to talk about,” said Shepherd cheerfully. “It’s a very challenging game. See? These little short blocks are armies-”

Elizabeth shook her head. “Thanks, I’ll take a deferment.”

“Perhaps we can come up with a Jacobite variant,” suggested Alban with a trace of a smile. Catching Shepherd’s puzzled look, he explained. “The only war that interests Elizabeth is the Rising of 1745 in Scotland.”

They turned back to the technical matters of the game, and Elizabeth went off in search of Geoffrey. She found him in Amanda’s den, reading a newspaper.

“Hullo,” she said, curling up beside him on the sofa. “I’m bored. Anything interesting in the news?”

“Certainly not!” he answered in shocked tones. “This is the local newspaper, so it contains no news. Anyway, we only read it to find out who has been caught.”

“Then I won’t ask to borrow it.”

He nodded, absently turning a page.

Elizabeth tried again. “Chandler Grove isn’t a very exciting place, is it?”

“You can dial a wrong number and still talk,” said Geoffrey, without looking up.

“There’s absolutely nothing to do. Alban and Dr. Shepherd are in the library-playing with blocks!”

Geoffrey looked up, raising an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Have you talked to Eileen?”

He tossed the newspaper on the pine coffee table. “As a matter of fact, I did knock on her door after dinner. Still no response. So I asked Mildred to take a tray up to her. If she’s not hungry, she can throw it, which may help her nerves enormously.”

Elizabeth looked at him thoughtfully. “You know, you may be a very nice person,” she said, as if the idea had not occurred to her before.

“How dare you think such a thing!” He huffed. “No, Cousin. I think it only counts as being nice if you do it to someone you don’t like, if I remember my catechism correctly.”

“Are you very worried about her?” asked Elizabeth, wondering if she should confide in him.

“Impertinent of you to ask, since you are not,” Geoffrey replied.

“I am so! I went up to see her right after dinner. And,” she added triumphantly, “she let me in!”

“Is she all right?”

“I think so. She says she’s tired and that doing the painting has been a strain for her. I asked her to quit, and she says she won’t.”

“Of course she won’t. That was an excuse. Eileen loves to paint. If she didn’t have that damned painting to work on, she’d never get out of the house and away from Mother.”

Elizabeth nodded sympathetically. “Well, it’s only for another week. If she can just keep telling herself that through the rehearsal and the fittings, and all the rest of it…”

“She’ll be all right. Satisky should be all right for her. He’s too much of a sponge to hurt her. With, of course, one possible exception.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh… just that frightened sponges can be deadly.”

“Oh, Geoffrey! Don’t talk doom and gloom! We’re being silly!” Elizabeth shivered, wanting very much to be talked out of her own apprehension. “The wedding is going to go off just fine, in spite of all our collective nerve storms, and after that, it will be up to Eileen and Michael, and that’s all there is to it.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Geoffrey said grudgingly. “We are a nervy family. It’s probably the money.”

“You mean Great-Aunt Augusta’s legacy?”

“No, just money in general. Having it, I mean. People with money have to find other things to fret about. Haven’t you ever noticed that people on soap operas never worry about car payments or unemployment? They all have their minds on higher planes-like adultery and drug addiction.”

Elizabeth laughed. “And what does this family worry about?”

Geoffrey considered. “Well, I myself live in constant fear of boredom, but thus far I’ve managed to stave it off. Yes, Elizabeth, I know you find it dull here, but I don’t-perhaps because I enjoy my own company so much.”

“You’re never serious,” sighed Elizabeth.

“On the contrary, I am always serious,” said Geoffrey. “I learned long ago that if you tell the truth as matter-of-factly as possible, no one ever believes you.”

“Bill does that, too, sometimes,” said Elizabeth thoughtfully.

“Yes, but with him it’s a hobby. With me, it is an art.”

“He is certainly less arty than you are, if that’s what you mean,” said Elizabeth, with a suspicious hint of irony in her voice.

“Yes, but he is not nearly so interesting. Law school, indeed!”

“Oh, Bill can be very interesting. You should hear about his new roommate! He’s an archeology major and he brings bones home to study and leaves them lying around. I’m looking forward to meeting him.”

Geoffrey looked at her solemnly. “Why?”

“Because-well, because-oh, you know what I mean! Anyway, just because Bill isn’t one of the family eccentrics doesn’t mean he’s dull.” She sighed. “At least he knows what he wants to be, which is more than I can say.”

“Don’t you know?” asked Geoffrey. “Since you told me that you were majoring in sociology, I naturally assumed that you were in the marriage market.”

Elizabeth laughed. “There doesn’t seem to be much demand for the product. Anyway, I guess I was in the marriage market, as you put it, but my campus romance broke up this spring, and-”

Geoffrey held up a restraining hand. “Spare me!” he pleaded. “Spare me all heartrending details! I beg you to carry the sword in your heart, and be brave!”

Elizabeth was struggling to think of a sufficiently witty reply when Satisky blundered into the room, with a ready frown of apology.

“The library is occupied, and I just thought-”

Geoffrey stood up. “They’ll be leaving soon, I expect,” he said casually. “I think I’ll go with them. They may need a referee. You never can tell with barbarians. Would you like to come along, Elizabeth? You could be a cheerleader. Scream for blood and that sort of thing.”