Lydia Millet - Magnificence

Jim would explain when he got in, she told herself, and went outside to where the church ladies were picking their way through the back garden, gazing down into the fishponds and nodding. Angela had her arm around one of them — the white-haired one from the kitchen, hobbling unsteadily.

Worried about the will, hoping for some distraction, Susan hurried toward them, on a path to overtake. As she came up behind the last in the group — an imperious fat lady in red and gold and another, in gray, who looked timid and thin by contrast — the white-hair with Angela stumbled and emitted a gasp of fright.

“You’re all right, Ellie dear,” said Angela, whose arm had stopped her from falling. “You’ll be fine.”

“Tripped me,” said the lady.

“Let’s see,” said Susan.

In the pebbly soil between the flagstones of the path, at the white-haired lady’s feet, was a thin piece of black tubing.

“Part of the irrigation system,” said Susan.

“It’s unsafe,” said Angela.

Susan gazed at her.

“It waters my garden,” she said after a pause, irritably.

“This way, honey,” murmured Angela, but she gave Susan a punitive look.

•

When Jim came over after work three of the ladies were still present, in Oksana’s room off the entrance hall. It was almost six-thirty in the evening and they had never left; they sat there in armchairs and, as far as Susan could tell, said hardly anything. There was the oldest — the white-haired lady — and the slight one in gray and the large one bedecked in the colors of the Chinese emperors. They each had a copy of a Christian novel nearby; this one featured a handsome angel who flew down to earth to help a single mother with a crippled child, then fell in love with her. A couple of them even had drinks beside them. The conversation appeared to be moving with exceeding slowness.

When Susan and Jim came to stand in the doorway Angela was telling the plot of the novel. The other ladies ignored them.

“The angel starts out too proud, you see,” said Angela, and turned to Susan. “You see, the angels that come down to help people are often the proud ones. God gives them penance. Having to come down from heaven is a punishment for them.”

In a corner, Oksana painted her fingernails fire-engine red and watched her small television. On the news, someone was dead.

“I mean it, they’re not moving,” whispered Susan to Jim, as they veered away from Oksana’s door and down the hall to the bar area where they liked to drink their dinnertime cocktails. “They’ve been here since like ten a.m. It’s like they’ve been installed. Like furniture.”

“But you can’t sit on them,” said Jim.

She poured him some scotch.

“The lawyer left a message for me,” she told him. “He said they set a court date. Is that bad?”

“It’s neutral. Look, wills get contested all the time. But will contests are hardly ever won by the people who bring the objection. Keep that in mind.”

“I was hoping maybe it wouldn’t even make it to court, though,” she said.

“I’ll go with you. Don’t think about it.”

•

As the evening wore on she and Jim grew fixated on the question of when the old ladies would leave. When ten, then eleven o’clock rolled around both of them were making trips down the hall so that they could walk past Oksana’s open door and see whether the ladies were still there. Then Jim would return or Susan would return to him, shaking their heads in disbelief. Susan was aware of acting vulture-like. The truth was it shouldn’t matter to her — the ladies were quiet and infringed upon no one but Oksana — but she was intrigued by the unlikeliness of the ladies’ presence, of their remaining in the room as though they were frozen there, as though they were inevitable.

Finally it was eleven and Susan hovered in Oksana’s doorway like a parent executing a curfew.

“Let me run something up the flag,” she said. “Maybe Jim or I could drive you ladies home tonight? Because night driving can be dangerous—”

“Oh no, dear,” said Angela. “No no no . We’re having a slumber party!”

The faces turned to her then, all three of the visitors staring. Oksana continued to ignore them and ignored Susan too, eyes fixed on a late-night talk show on the television. Susan noticed she had put on a nightgown.

“A slumber. .”

“Oh yes. We’re sleeping in my room.”

Was Angela lucid?

“Oh,” said Susan uncertainly. “Ladies? Is that. .”

They seemed to be nodding, though it was almost imperceptible in the dimness of the room. It struck her as absurd — either a comedy of errors or a group mania of some kind. They had to be in their late seventies and eighties; they must need comfortable beds, she thought, need their routine, their home environments; they must all have some complaint, minor or not, arthritis, bursitis, porous and brittle bones. There was no way they could intend to sleep in Angela’s bed, no way they could have made that plan on their own. Had Angela misled them about the facilities? Had they been fed? Was she even taking care of them?

“If you’re staying, please use the bedrooms on the second floor,” Susan said finally. “OK? There are plenty of beds up there. Most have their own bathrooms, though some share. Jim will be happy to help you up the stairs, if any of you needs a hand. Because frankly I can’t imagine you’ll all be comfortable in Angela’s room. There’s only the one bed in there! You realize that, don’t you?”

“Upstairs will be quite suitable,” said Angela, with a certain smugness.

“But then the staircase is hazardous too, or at least it could be,” objected Susan, recalling the white-haired lady — Ellen, she guessed — tripping on the small piece of black tubing.

“Young lady,” said the portly dowager in red, turning in her armchair with sudden severity, “you know, we may be getting on, but we’re certainly not deceased yet.”

“Oh no, I didn’t—” started Susan, but Jim interrupted from behind her.

“Oksana,” said Jim, “why don’t you come and get me when these ladies want to go upstairs. Or, of course, when you’d like to go to bed yourself. I’ll be glad to accompany them.” He looked at the imperious one. “No offense intended, madam. I’m a lawyer by trade. I’m thinking purely of our liability here as homeowners. Or call it responsibility. A broken hip could be costly.”

With the ladies staring at him Susan withdrew and he followed.

“I can’t believe you said that,” she whispered.

“Angela’s taking advantage of you,” he said. “She should have asked first. It’s bullshit.”

“I mean, she does have dementia,” said Susan.

“She’s also manipulative.”

•

It was almost midnight when Oksana came to get them, with tired eyes and traces of cold cream on her cheeks. Jim went to escort the women upstairs while Susan got towels out of the linen closet and sorted them into groups, a bath towel, hand towel and washcloth for each lady, and then carried them up the narrow back stairs formerly used by servants.

She went to the rooms and laid the towels out — a small pile each on the twin beds of the Arctic and another on the queen bed in the Himalayas — before meeting the guests in the upstairs hallway, where they stood with Jim under the dome. After they had shown them to the rooms, walking back to their own, she stopped Jim with a hand on his arm.

“I murdered Hal,” she said. “I killed him. You should know that about me.”