T. Boyle - Riven Rock

Roscoe was still at the wheel, pale and washed out from his bout of the grippe, but Dr. Hoch was standing there at the open gate with Mr. McCormick, and Mr. McCormick didn’t even seem to be sweating. “What the—” O‘Kane panted, Ringing himself against the hood of the car for support. “What—?”

“Oh, Eddie,” Mr. McCormick said, his eyes gone away to hide in his head again. “Hi. I was just — I thought — well, we should go out this gate today, so I–I came to open it, because we should see the begonias, the new begonias—”

O‘Kane was stunned. He was obliterated. He had maybe nine breaths more to draw on this earth and then it was over. “Begonias’?” he wheezed.

Mr. McCormick gestured for him to turn round and look behind him. Bewildered, O‘Kane slowly pivoted and gazed back down the road that fled away into the distance and to the moving stain that was Martin Thompson limping there at the far end of it. And sure enough, there they were, a whole fresh-planted double row of them on either side of the pavement and stretching all the way back to Mart and beyond: begonias.

And then Christmas fell on them from the realms of space, the earth twisting round the sky and Aldebaran bright and persistent in the eastern sky, the season festive, the stuffed goose, the songs and drinks. Marshall Fields’ in Chicago sent out a decorated Christmas tree and foil-wrapped presents for the whole staff (which now numbered fourteen in the household and forty-seven on the grounds), along with the usual baubles and candies and tan-shelled Georgia pecans, and baskets of prime California navels that had traveled from the San Fernando Valley to Chicago and back to California again. Outside, on the front lawn, the big Monterey pine, as wide around at the base as two men fully outstretched till their fingertips met on either side, was festooned with multicolored lights and set ablaze in the night. O‘Kane sent his mother a sweater of virgin wool and a porcelain reproduction of the State of California flag for his father, and he sent Eddie, Jr. a jackknife care of his mother and not Rosaleen, who couldn’t be trusted with anything you didn’t tie round her neck with a note attached to it. And he found a filigreed bracelet in fourteen-carat white gold for Giovannella, who refused it on the grounds that Guido would want to know where it came from. “I’ll wear it only for you, Eddie,” she said. “When we’re alone. In bed.”

Katherine came and went in her customary storm of gifts, complaints and commands, but not before O‘Kane had the opportunity to listen in on her annual conversation with her husband — this time from her end of the line. It was the day before Christmas and she’d just arrived, late as usual, and that hurt Mr. McCormick to the quick and she didn’t even seem to notice. The windows were smeared with rain, it had been dark for an hour or so, and O’Kane was drunk, drunk on the job, and God help him if the Ice Queen were to pin him down with one of her endless interrogations and catch a whiff of it on his breath. He shouldn’t have been drinking, and he knew it, but it was Christmas and Sam Wah was brewing a wicked pungent rum punch with raisins and slivers of orange peel floating round the top of it and half the people on the estate were slipping in and out the back door stewed to the gills. And besides, he was depressed. It was his tenth Christmas in California, ten years of nursing and drinking and getting nowhere. He wasn’t rich yet or even close to it, he didn’t own an orange grove or an avocado ranch, his one son was an alien to him all the way across the country in Boston and the other one was named Guido — and why not get drunk?

Anyway, he was sneaking out of the kitchen and through the back hall to the central stairway after quaffing his sixth murderous cup of hot Chinese Christmas punch, when he heard Katherine’s voice and froze. It wasn’t as if he was surprised to see her — they’d all been tiptoeing around and looking over their shoulders since early that morning, even Hoch — but he was half hoping she wouldn’t come at all. She didn’t bring anybody a lick of happiness — just the opposite — and it was his opinion, shared by Nick, Pat and Mart, that Mr. McCormick would have been better off without her. The way he’d paced and fretted and worked away at himself with the soap that morning was just pathetic, as if he was afraid she could smell him over the line. He was so excited he hadn’t been able to eat his breakfast and pushed everything but the soup away at lunch, and he barely noticed the little gifts the employees had given him — Ernestine Thompson had knitted him a scarf from her and Nick, Mart gave him a pencil sharpener, and O‘Kane, in a symbolic gesture, presented him with a keychain inscribed with the legend WHEN ALL THE DOORS OPEN TO YOU. They were nothing more than tokens really, but in past years Mr. McCormick had made a big deal over them.

“What do you mean by that?” Katherine’s voice rose in anger. Edging out into the entrance hall, O‘Kane could see movement in the library beyond. It was Katherine, and her back was to him. She held the telephone in one stiff ice-sculpted hand, tilting her head forward to speak into the mouthpiece. Torkelson was stationed just outside the door like a cigar-store Indian, his face wiped clean of all interest or emotion, a butler to the core. He was staring right at O’Kane, but he never even blinked.

“I will not be talked to in that tone of voice, Stanley, I just won’t…. What did you say? Do you want me to hang this phone up right now? Do you?… All right, now that’s better. Yes, I do love you, you know that—”

O‘Kane watched her shoulders, the movement of her wrist as she manipulated the receiver, the light gathered in her hair. He knew he should hightail it up the stairs before she turned and spotted him, but he didn’t. He was caught there, fascinated, like a boy in the woods watching the processes of nature unfold around him. There were birds in the trees, toads at his feet, snakes in the grass.

“Now Stanley — no, absolutely not. How many times do we have to go through this? I haven’t seen or heard of Butler Ames in God, ten years and more, and no, I haven’t been to dinner with Secretary Baker…. I resent the implication, Stanley, and if you’re going to — no, absolutely not. Newton Baker is a friend, an old friend of the family, and as Secretary of War under President Wilson he naturally came to instruct us from time to time, and we—”

There was a silence and Katherine shifted her weight from one foot to the other and turned her profile to the open door. Her face was pale and blanched, but she was wearing makeup and red lipstick and she looked dramatic in the lamplight, like a stage actress awaiting her cue. She was listening, and O‘Kane could imagine the sort of disjointed and accusatory speech Mr. McCormick must have been delivering on the other end of the line, and he watched as she held the receiver out away from her ear and tried to compose herself.

“Don’t you say a word abut Jane Roessing — she’s a saint, do you hear me?… That’s absolutely disgusting, Stanley, and I’m warning you, I am — really, I just don’t believe what I’m hearing. Everything is me, me, me — but did you ever stop to think what I’m going through?

“No, I’m not trying to upset you, I just want you to understand my position, to think for one minute what it must be like for me to have to go out in society without you on my arm, with no man at all, always the odd one out—

“Yes, I know you’re trying to get well. No. No, now I won’t listen to this, and you leave Jane out of it, she’s been a — I have nothing to hide. Yes, she is here. She’s come to keep me company at the hotel, and I promise you I won’t neglect you. I’ll be here every day for the next two weeks, and you just tell me what you need and I’ll—”