William Lashner - Bitter Truth

“I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet him.”

“Don’t be. I love him dearly, of course, he’s my husband, but he can be a very difficult man. Childhood trauma will do that.”

“What kind of trauma?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s a terribly sad story,” said Selma. “Too depressing for a rainy night like this. Do you really want to hear it?”

“Yes, actually.”

“Well, make yourself comfortable at least,” she said, almost pushing me onto the bed and sitting right beside me. The bed creaked beneath us.

She crossed her legs and put her left arm behind her so that her upper body was turned toward me. She was wearing a clinging black dress that sparkled in the dim light and the sharp points of her breasts gently wiggled at me from beneath the fabric.

“I won’t bore you with the details, but in a horrible mistake Kingsley, my husband, shot his father to death on the back patio of this very house on a dark, rainy night much like this one.”

Her brown eyes were looking straight into mine, as if in warning. I blinked twice, thinking that what Caroline had successfully avoided talking of during the ride to Veritas her mother had blurted to me with nary an excuse, and then I shifted away from her as politely as I could.

“Needless to say,” she continued, “it has scarred my husband terribly. This house used to be so grand a place, I am told, a marvelous place for parties. But that was when Mr. Reddman was still alive. He knew how to run a house. My husband has let the house go. I’ve done what I could to maintain it but it is so difficult, almost as if it has become what it was always meant to be, as if its essential character is becoming exposed with all the leaks and warped floors and the browning wallpaper. Is it any wonder, then, that I spend much of my time away? Would you spend all your life here if you had a choice, Mr. Carl?”

“No,” I said, shifting away from her a little more.

“Of course not, and still they carp. But enough talk of Kendall and my husband’s sad past, both subjects are entirely too morbid. Tell me about you and Caroline. She said you are lovers.”

“So she did.”

“You know of course that she is engaged,” said Selma and on the final syllable her right hand, which had been floating in the air as if held high by a marionette’s string, dropped lightly onto my knee.

“Yes, I do, Mrs. Shaw,” I said, looking at her hand. While her face was stretched taut and young, her hand had the look of a turkey foot about it, bone-thin, covered with hard red wrinkles, tipped by claws. I tried to deftly brush her hand off as if it had fallen there by mistake, but as I performed my gentle brush her fingers tightened on my knee and stayed put.

“Caroline has known Franklin Harrington for years and years,” said Selma Shaw, not in any way acknowledging the ongoing battle over my bended knee, “ever since Mother Shaw brought him to this house as a boy. They took to each other so quickly we had always assumed their marriage. Caroline, of course, has dallied and so, I am told, has Franklin in his way, but they will be married despite what any of us would prefer. You should be aware of that as an unalterable fact. Destiny, in this family at least, must always have its way with us. Even love must yield. No one knows better than I.”

“Could you move your hand off my knee, Mrs. Shaw?”

“Of course,” she said, loosening her grip and sliding her hand up my thigh.

“That’s not what I meant,” I said, standing up.

Before I could get cleanly away, Caroline’s mother goosed me.

“What is going on here?” I said, perhaps too loudly, but I believe my pique was understandable. “Are you all crazy?”

“It’s just Caroline,” she said, laughing. “She is so prone to exaggeration. Come sit down, Mr. Carl,” she said, patting the bed beside her. “I’ll be good.”

“I’ll stand, thank you.”

“You must think me a pathetic old witch.” She lifted her face to me and paused, waiting for me to inject my protestations. When I didn’t say a word she laughed once more. “You do, don’t you. Such an honest young man. Caroline always knows how to find them. But before you judge me too harshly, Mr. Carl, consider how noxious I must appear to myself. I wasn’t always like this, no, not at all, but the same forces that have rotted out this house have turned me into the wondrous creature you see before you. You’re better off without any of us, Mr. Carl.”

“I just came for dinner,” I said.

“Oh, I know the attraction, heavens yes. Just as Mother Shaw, may she rot in peace, brought Franklin here for Caroline, she brought me here for Kingsley. She had that way about her, of taking destiny by the hand and turning it to do her will. I had no intention of staying. It was a part-time job, to read to her son in the evenings, that was all. He was forty already and had difficulty reading for himself. I was only twenty and still in school, but already I believed I knew what I wanted. You want to know how pathetic I really am, Mr. Carl, know that this was what I wanted, this house, this name, this life, from which now I run to France to escape whenever I am able. The French say that a man who is born to be hanged will never be drowned. I was born to be rich, I always thought, in the deepest of my secret hearts. And see, I was right, but I suppose I was born to drown too.” She stood, and without looking at me, walked to the door. “Do yourself a favor, Mr. Carl, leave tomorrow morning as soon as the road clears and don’t look back. Leave tomorrow morning and forget all about what you think you want from Caroline.”

She closed the door behind her. I stared at it for a moment and then my stomach growled. I stepped to the bureau and whisked off the cover of the plate. It was a sandwich all right, but beneath the stale bun the slices of tongue were so thick I could still see the whole of the muscle lolling between the slabs of teeth in the mouth of its cow, brawny, hairy, working the cud from one side of the mouth to the other. I went to sleep hungry.

I had thought about keeping the bedside lamp on the whole of the night to discourage any other unwelcome visitors, but I found it hard enough to sleep in the must and damp of that room, with the splat, splat splat, splat of leaking water dropping into the chamberpot and the groans of that ancient house collapsing ever so slowly into itself, so I turned out the light and, while lying in the darkness, I thought about Claudius Reddman, grand progenitor of Reddman Foods. His legacy seemed a dark and bitter one just then, except for the wealth. One daughter dead, another run off, the third widowed by her own son’s hand, and all the while Elisha Poole railing drunkenly at his ill fortune before silencing his wails at the end of a rope. Then there was the grandson, Kingsley Shaw, shooting his father on the portico of the house on a rain-swept night. Then there was the ruin that was Selma Shaw, brought to the house by Grandmother Faith to be Kingsley’s wife and doomed to become the living embodiment of all her false expectations. And, of course, there was the house itself, reverting to a wild and untamed place filled with decay, like some misanthrope’s heart. It was almost enough to have me swear off my desperate search for untold amounts of money. Almost. For I was sure if I was ever to be given the gift of glorious wealth I would do a better job of handling it than the Reddmans. A bright airy house, filled with light, maybe a converted barn with a tennis court, clay because I was never the swiftest, and a pool, and a gardener to mow the acres of lawn and care for the flowers. And there would be parties, and women in white dresses, and a green light beckoning from across the sound.