Читать книгу Three Short Novels - Gina Berriault - Страница 19

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Some land that Russell had inherited south of the city, near the ocean, sold to a tract developer, and almost every week, or so it seemed to her, he sold at a great profit an old apartment building or a small hotel that he had bought only a few months before with a loan and had remodeled with another loan. And everything that she did with this prosperity brought words of praise, whether it was the accumulation of exquisite clothes or of oil paintings from the Museum of Art exhibits, the selection of silver and crystal and antiques, or the artistry of her suppers for a few guests. After two years in the house near Twin Peaks, they moved to a modern house surrounded by a Japanese garden, and the combining of her antiques with the modern architecture, all the harmonious combining was like a confirmation of the happiness of the family. It was further confirmed by color photographs in a magazine of interior decoration and by the article written by one of the editors who stressed the wonderful compatibility of antique and modern that had, as its source, the compatibility of the family with everything beautiful. No member of the family, however, appeared in the pictures—only Vivian at a far distance, her back turned, a very small figure in lemon-yellow slacks way out among the etching-like trees of the garden, glimpsed through the open glass doors of the living room. It was in bad taste to show the family, she understood; they would appear to be like the nouveaux riches, wanting to be seen among their possessions. Not to show the family gave more seclusion to the home and a touch of the sacred to the family.

In the second spring after their move to the new house, it was included in a tour of several beautiful homes in the city, the tour a charitable endeavor by the young matrons’ league to which she belonged. While the woman who came once a week to the house was cleaning it the day before the tour, Vivian locked up in cabinets and closets small valuables that could be pocketed, although there was to be a leaguer in almost every room to act as hostess. It was customary for the owners of the houses in the tour to be away all day, and she had planned to spend the day with her mother, shopping for summer clothes. But the night before, carefully wiping out with a tissue the ashtrays she and Russell had been using and rinsing their liquor glasses, she knew she would remain in the house—not to hear words of praise and not to prevent any thefts, but to stand anonymously by and watch the flow of strangers who had paid their tour-ticket price in order to enter into the privacy of her home.

With the other women who were acting as hostesses, she awaited the invasion. Wearing a pink spring suit and white gloves, a white purse under her arm, she was, she felt, sure to be mistaken by the crowd for one of them. The early ones, at ten o’clock, entered with a reverent step because it was their first house of the day; but the later ones entered with less reverence, commenting loudly on plants and garden lamps as they came up the front path, taking in the living room with gazes already somewhat jaded by their acquaintance with other homes of secluded beauty. She watched them as she sat on the arm of a chair, chatting with a hostess, or wandered with them through the house. They were chic women, young and old, and they were impeccably dressed men with oblique faces as if seen in attendance upon her in a mirror of a beauty salon and never in direct confrontation; they were eccentrics, one a young woman in a garishly green outfit, with a pheasant feather a foot long attached to her beret and switching the space behind her as she stopped frequently, her feet in a dancer’s pose, to glance around with large, transfixed eyes and a saintly smile; and there were two seedy brothers, shuffling and gray, who had the look of small-time realtors from the Mission district. For brief moments Vivian met eyes with the invaders, their roundly open eyes, their shifting eyes, their eyes ashamed of their curiosity, their envious eyes, and their eyes desiring ruin. She caught sight of a hole in the sock of one of the seedy brothers and of their run-down, polished shoes. She mingled with them up and down the hallways, on the flight of stairs between the two floors, and in and out of rooms, following a group into the serenity of the bedroom of herself and her husband and observing with them the wide, high-swelling bed, the ornately carved bedstead and the plum silk spread, the highboy with its shining brass hardware; the lamps, one on each side of the bed, a yard high with cylindrical shades of white silk; the black marble ashtrays; and the sand-color, thick carpeting that hushed everyone’s step. They were fascinated by the small photos of Russell and David in pewter frames on her dressing table, and by a snapshot of the three of them in ski clothes. They bent to see the three faces closer, and after the others had done this, she, too, leaned closer to see for herself.