Jan Burke - Eighteen

Miriam pointed one perfectly-shaped red fingernail at him. “How can you say she’s not a liar? She once told you Harry was her father.”

“She knew I wouldn’t believe it. She never tells me any lie she thinks I might believe. Come on, she’s waiting.”

Bill had heard Ellie cross into one of the upstairs staging rooms. This meant, he knew, that she had staged some clues for him, placed objects about the room intended to remind him of specific Hitchcock movies. It was an extension of the old game they played, and one of the reasons that housekeepers didn’t last long. The last one left after finding a mannequin, unclad except for Harry’s cap, sitting in the bathtub. (“The Trouble With Harry,” Bill had said, earning praise from Ellie even as they tried to revive the fainting housekeeper.)

Ellie, knowing Miriam hated the game, always had one ready when her sister came to visit.

Wearing a pair of jeans with holes in the knees, Ellie was sitting cross-legged on top of large mahogany table, passing a needle and thread through colored miniature marshmallows to make a necklace. She smiled as she moved the needle through a green marshmallow.

“How much this time?” she asked without looking up.

“Ellie, darling! So good to see you.”

Ellie glanced at Bill. “Too many Bette Davis movies.” She chose a pink marshmallow next.

“What on earth are you doing? And why are you wearing those horrid clothes?”

“Shhh!” Ellie said, now reaching for a yellow marshmallow.

Bill was looking around the room. As usual in a game, there were many oddball objects and antiques in the room. The trick was find the clues among the objects. “How many all together?”

“Three,” Ellie answered.

“Oh! This stupid game. I might have known,” Miriam grumbled.

He saw the toy windmill first.

“Foreign Correspondent,” he said.

“One down, two to go,” Ellie laughed. “How much money this time, Mir?”

“I didn’t come here to ask for money,” Miriam said, sitting down.

Bill looked over at her in surprise, then went back to the game.

Searching through the bric-a-brac that covered a low set of shelves, he soon found the next clue: three small plaster of Paris sculptures of hands and wrists. A man’s hand and a woman’s hand were handcuffed together; another male hand, missing the part of its little finger, stood next to the handcuffed set. “The Thirty-Nine Steps.”

“Bravo, Bill. Of course you came here for money, Mir. You always do.”

“Not this time.”

“What then?” Ellie asked, watching as Bill picked up a music box from a small dressing table.

“I want to move back home.”

Ellie stopped stringing marshmallows. Bill set the music box down.

Don’t give in, Ellie, he prayed silently.

“No,” Ellie said, and went back to work on her necklace. Bill’s sigh of relief was audible.

“Ellie, please. I’m your sister.”

“I’ll buy you a place to live.”

“I want to live here.”

“Why?”

“It’s in the will. I can live here if I want to.”

Ellie looked up. “We had an agreement.”

Miriam glanced nervously toward Bill, then said, “It’s my home, too, you know. You’ve allowed a perfect stranger to live here. Well, I don’t deserve any less.”

“Why do you want to come back, Mir? You haven’t lived here in years.”

“I think it’s time we grew closer as sisters, that’s all.”

Ellie only laughed at that. Bill was heartened by the laughter. Ellie was protective of Miriam, held a soft spot for her despite her abuses. But if that sister plea didn’t get through to her, maybe there was a chance…

“Look, you’ve been living up here in grand style,” Miriam said petulantly, “and I just want to enjoy a bit of it myself.”

Bill saw Ellie’s mood shifting, saw her glancing over at him. He felt awkwardness pulling ahead of his curiosity by a nose. He decided to leave this discussion to the sisters. It was Ellie’s house, after all. She could do as she liked. He started to edge out of the room, but Ellie said, “This concerns you, too, Bill. Don’t leave.”

He wasn’t put off by what others might have taken to be a commanding tone. In seven years, he had never heard the word “please” come out of her mouth. Although he thought of few things as certain when it came to Ellie, one certainty was that she rarely asked anything of others. Knowing this, he treated any request as if there were an implied “please.”

“This isn’t his house!” Miriam shouted.

“Lower your voice. He is my guest and welcomed here.”

Bill turned away, forced himself to look again at the objects on the dressing table.

Ellie went on. “You spent all of your inheritance in less than two years, Mir. Grandfather knew you were like our parents.”

Bill knew this part of the story. Their grandfather had raised the girls after their parents-wild, spoiled and reckless, according to Ellie-were killed in a car wreck. While Miriam received a large inheritance, Ellie’s grandfather had left the house and most of his money to Ellie, thinking Miriam too much like his late daughter.

“Don’t start speaking ill of the dead,” Miriam protested to Ellie.

“All right, I won’t. But the fact remains…”

“That you’ve made money and I’ve lost all of mine. Don’t rub it in, Ellie. Now I’ve even lost the condo.”

“I know.”

“You know? Then you understand why I want to live here.”

“Not really. But forget living here. I’ll help you buy a home, free and clear. But this time, I’ll keep the title so that you can’t mortgage it endlessly.”

“I want to live here. This is my home!”

“Fine. Then you won’t get another dime from me.”

Bill watched in the dressing table mirror as Miriam swallowed hard, then lifted her chin. “All right, if that’s what you want to do. My bags are in the car. Harry can pick up the rest of my things-”

“No!” Ellie interrupted sharply, clenching her hands, smushing part of her marshmallow necklace. She shook her head, then said more calmly, “You won’t badger that man. I swear you won’t be allowed to live here if you do. I’ll sell this place first.”

“All right, all right. I won’t cause trouble, Ellie. You’ll see. I’ll even bring my cook and housekeeper with me. That will save Harry a lot of work.”

Bill was hardly paying attention by then. He was nettled. So nettled, he didn’t offer to help Miriam with her bags as she left the room. He kept his back to Ellie, pretending to caught up in the game again.

My guest. It was accurate enough, he supposed. Not “my lover”. Not “my friend.” Not “the man I want to spend my life with.” My guest. He picked up the music box again.

“You’ve got a burr under your saddle, Bill. What is it?”

He ignored her for a moment, lifting the lid of music box. It played “The Merry Widow Waltz.”

He heard Ellie sigh behind him. “I’m not happy about it, either, “she said, “but there’s nothing I can do. Perhaps having Miriam here won’t be so bad.”

He closed the lid of the music box. “Shadow of a Doubt,” he said, and schooled his features into a smile before turning toward her. “Thank you for all the effort, Ellie. It’s always an amusing game.”

She looked puzzled. He hadn’t fooled her, of course. Belatedly he realized that she must have watched him in the mirror. But if she could be obstinate, well, by damn, so could he. He excused himself and left the room.

As he paid the tab in a bar that evening, Bill had to acknowledge that the slight had escalated into silent warfare, and much of it was probably his fault. He had not yet managed to tell Ellie how she had given offense. In one moment, it seemed of so little importance that he was ashamed of himself for thinking about it at all. In the next moment, it seemed to stand as a perfect symbol for everything that was wrong between them. There were several drinks between moments. But in the end, he had firmly resolved to talk to her, not to let one comment ruin all that they had shared until then.