Sins of the Flesh Read online

“Was his death a coroner’s case?”

  “In 1920? No,” said Rha, taking over. “By then my father had been a fixture in Little Busquash since 1908, when Antonio III bought two automobiles and my father as chauffeur and—I guess you’d have to say, general factotum. Ivor Ramsbottom—no award for thinking it wise of me to change my name! Antonio III was a genuine curmudgeon, hated the world, but he loved Ivor. He relied on Ivor for everything from managing the servants to being a weird kind of mother for Dr. Nell, and Ivor was the faithful, devoted servant. From what Rufus and I have gathered, Antonio III promised him that he’d be remembered in the will. And he was! Just not the way he’d counted on. He was left tenancy of Little Busquash until Dr. Nell died.”

  “So in 1925, when she vanished, his tenancy hung in the balance?” Carmine asked.

  Rufus finished serving the simple lunch, and slid into the booth alongside Rha. “The trouble is,” he said, sipping water, “that Rha and I weren’t born yet. The second of November, 1929 for both of us.”

  “All Souls’ Day,” Carmine said.

  Rha’s eyes danced. “Is that as bad as Halloween?” he asked.

  “For a Catholic, I’d think it was a good day, not morbid.”

  “Good but morbid,” Rha said solemnly. “Doesn’t sound like us.”

  “Isn’t Ivor a Welsh name?” Carmine asked.

  “I don’t know, except that Ivor’s ancestors were Russian—I mean the original Russians, not invaders from the Steppes. His marriage was shameful in my lights, though I don’t remember my mother. Ivy does. Mama’s origins were Swedish and she was hugely tall, but that wasn’t the shameful part. She was a simpleton, and Ivor knew it. Why he married her I don’t know, nor does Ivy, and she had normal offspring, so whatever was wrong with her wasn’t inherited, at least in our generation. Still, it sure turned Ivy and me off marriage and children.”

  “When did your mother die, Rha?”

  “In 1931, falling down the Busquash Manor grand staircase. She had poor control of her body, Ivy says.”

  “And Ivor? What happened to him?”

  “He died in 1934,” Rha said, sounding reflective. “Funny, that. He wasn’t old—fifty at most—but after Mama died, he faded away. I mean that he became more frightening but less visible, if that can make sense. Ivy took the brunt of him, while Fenella had taken me to rear with Rufus. Though Dr. Nell and her father both loved Ivor, we children were petrified of him.”

  “How old was Ivy when he died?” Carmine asked.

  “My sister’s sensitive about her age, but I think she was at least ten, maybe twelve.”

  Time to change the subject. “What was Fenella like?” he asked.

  Rufus laughed. “Ah, you’ve been listening to conflicting stories!” he cried. “An angel, or a devil, huh?”

  “You got it.”

  “She was both. If Fenella loved you, Carmine, you could have no greater friend and ally. If she disliked you, look out for trouble! Some of her churlishness I lay at the feet of her health—it must have been terrible, to inherit all that money, make even more, and then become too sick to do all the things she wanted to, like cruise the world on ocean liners, wine and dine and dance her way from Rio to Buenos Aires—all she could do was show Rha and me pictures in books, and they were in black-and-white. I know I loved Fenella.”

  “And so did I,” Rha said.

  “Do either of you think of her as a mother?”

  They answered together, strongly. “No.”

  Something had been growing in Rha’s face—puzzlement? “A question, Carmine, if I may?”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “The conviction is growing that I have seen you, but never been introduced.”

  “I’ve picked my wife up from Rha Tanais Tall a couple of times,” Carmine said. “She’s six foot three, so she shops there.”

  “Your wife is the Divine Desdemona?”

  “Yep.”

  “Captain, you have taste! Desdemona is the most queenly person I know.” A giggle escaped. “No offense.”

  Carmine eyed Rha sourly, but with a twinkle. “None taken. On a queenlier note, did Fenella object to your sexuality?”

  “No, it delighted her,” Rufus said. “She really thought her malady was inheritable, so anything that meant we didn’t procreate pleased her. She was never selfish about us, tried to keep us at home during her last years. I think she preferred our visits, because we always had so much to tell her. We used to try to make our stories of show biz and gays as exciting as the ocean liner cruises she never had.” He slid his arm around Rha’s waist. “The greatest piece of luck we ever had, Carmine, is knowing each other all our lives. Oh, the success and the comfort are fantastic, but they’re not what Rha and I are all about. We are about a very great love story.”

  “That, I can see,” Carmine said, sliding out of the booth. “My thanks for the candor and the clarification. So many deaths!”

  “Mostly from natural causes,” said Rufus, letting him out. “A world minus antibiotics and skilled obstetricians was a harder place to survive than today’s world. I mean, pneumonia was the biggest killer on the planet.”

  He returned to the theater and sat down next to Rha.

  “How do you think it went?” Rha asked.

  “Straight story-telling. He’s just information gathering.”

  Rha had had enough Carantonio family history, and went where his mind was dwelling. “I think we have to bring Roger up to go through his numbers. If he still wants to play Broadway leads, he’s going to have to suffer an occasional day or two up here away from all his friends. If Todo doesn’t work the routines out with him personally, it will never come right. Why won’t dancers admit that singers with great voices don’t dance like Fosse?”

  “Fred Astaire proved the same point twenty-five years ago,” Rufus said. “Roger Dartmont may not be Fosse or Astaire, but he can sing both of them into the back row of any choir.”

  Rha began to sing.

  “All is not gold despite its glitter, dodo!

  Let’s prevent our work going down the shitter, Todo!”

  FRIDAY, AUGUST 15, 1969

  Paper, thought Dr. Jessica Wainfleet, will be the death of me yet. She was sitting at her desk entering notes into one of the files dotted in neat stacks around it, taking care never to untie the striped ribbon around a stack until the stack preceding it had been tied up again. It had been a routine day and therefore not an exciting one; no patient had manifested evidence of change for better or for worse, and the chimpanzee Ari Melos had planned to use for stimulation and implantation of electrodes tomorrow had developed “the miseries” as he called them, not knowing how else to describe an inarticulate primate sickening for something not fully emerged. Whether it was a cold or some other bug, the animal most definitely would not be undergoing neurosurgery this weekend!

  Her phone rang just as Walter Jenkins came in; she gave him a brief smile and answered the imperious summons no modern person seemed capable of ignoring; the power this inanimate thing owned fascinated her. Nodding, Walter sat down opposite her, noting her growing exasperation as if it were some alien disease—which it probably was to him, Jess thought wryly.

  “Goddam grant committees!” she snapped, banging the receiver down. “NIH needs me to pinch-hit tomorrow in Boston.”

  “I’ll be okay,” he said, it seemed reading her mind. “I don’t need knocking out or sending back to the Asylum. My road map is getting bigger every day—I can see around corners now.”

  Startled, she stared at him intently for long enough to have unsettled an ordinary person; but not Walter Jenkins, who simply waited for her to finish whatever it was she was thinking. “When did you realize what happens to you if I go away?”

  “Dates come hard, Jess, that hasn’t changed. A while is the best I can say.”

  “But you realize what happens?”

  “Sure. If it’s a weekend, I get doped up and locked into my room here in HI. If it’s longer, I g
o back to the Asylum. They don’t treat me bad, but I hate that place.”

  “Do you know why it’s done?”

  The aquamarine eyes flashed scorn. “I’m no dummy, Jess. If you’re not here, they worry I might revert to the Old-Walter.”

  “And what do you think about that, inside yourself?”

  “The Old-Walter is dead. They know that too, but knowing it can’t kill their fear of the Old-Walter. He was bad news.”

  She couldn’t help it; Jess beamed at him, a mixture of love and admiration so entangled with self-love and self-admiration that she couldn’t quite locate where one ended and the other began. “Walter, you’re doing splendidly!” she exclaimed. “You’re deducing—and correctly! These are pathways you’ve opened up yourself, and they’re logical. There’s even a possibility that these new self-opened pathways are ethical. Do you have any liking left for the old Walter?” She spoke it as noun qualified by adjective, having no idea that to him, it was a two-part proper name.

  “The Old-Walter is beneath contempt,” he said, finding a use for that phrase, read in a book and esteemed. “I have a better name for him, though.”

  “You do? May I know it?”

  “Walter No-brain. He belongs in the Asylum. Walter Big-brain belongs in HI, even if you’re away in Boston.”

  “I think that too, and by this stage in your career, Walter, I think your panel will vote to keep you in HI. How much freedom from being locked in your room or medicated I can’t predict, but it’s possible the verdict will be only if necessary. And it won’t be necessary, will it?”

  His relaxed pose didn’t alter, nor his eyes deviate from fixation upon hers; he lifted his chin, yet still held her gaze. “I’m trying to stay on my road map, Jess, I really am. If I can discern which is the correct road to take when I come to a fork, I travel down it, even when the other road I didn’t take looks very pretty. That’s when I tell myself I’m in real control.”

  “Who is this ‘I’?”

  “This mind. This Walter Big-brain.”

  “And what did you call the old Walter?”

  “Walter No-brain. The non-Walter.”

  “You don’t really need to damp your language down, do you?”

  No emotion answered her question, but everything else was present. “That’s true,” he said. “I can talk on a higher level about myself—what I was, what I am, what I will be. But it’s better to keep it low level because of the others, I always feel. If I were to spout neuroanatomical terms, I’d frighten people all over again, and worse. Am I wrong to think that?”

  He had just demonstrated a stunning breakthrough, but also betrayed that it wasn’t particularly new. Was she neglecting him, or was he outstripping her? In the meantime, he was waiting for an answer to his question.

  “No, Walter, you’re not wrong. People always have expectations about the nature of outcomes, and they can only credit so much as the truth. Your instinct to dumb yourself down is right on, my friend. Even our world isn’t quite ready for Walter Big-brain.”

  “Ari will want to lock me in my HI room.”

  “Ari doesn’t have the last word,” Jess said firmly. “The last word belongs to me, and I say you should be allowed out and about during my absence. However, if after I’ve gone to Boston Ari, Fred and Moira decide to lock you in, I need your assurance right now that you’ll submit.”

  His head nodded through the unpalatable part of this, his mouth firm but tranquil. “My map has expanded enough to see what you mean, and why. I don’t want to be locked up, but I understand it. Yes, I’ll submit without a murmur.”

  “It won’t happen, Walter.”

  He demonstrated another stunning breakthrough. “The old Ari was a great guy, but he’s gone. There’s a new Ari, and the new Ari was born when Rose Compton married him. Rose is a weakling; you misjudged her when you appointed her head nurse. It’s not like you to fall for brownnosing, but maybe it’s Rose’s sex makes her brownnosing harder for you to see. Rose wants two things. The first, is you discredited, and the best way to do that is to show everyone that I’m not cured, that I’m a monster. The second thing she wants is Ari as Director of HI.”

  Her breath caught, she visibly stiffened. My God! she thought, how many new pathways is he opening up, and where do they go? He has just informed me that I fell for a professional confidence trick, and he’s absolutely right! Yet he called Rose a weakling! He’s right again, only a weakling would hatch such a futile plot.

  Weakling. Where did he learn that word? Or when I ablated—that is to say, destroyed—did I miss some micro-clusters of subcortical grey matter no one dreams exist? Old brain stuff.

  I am the best in the world at this, but how good is best? Oh, Walter, Walter, you are my testament to life, my triumph! All I need is another like you to repeat the procedure, and my entire world will genuflect. Don’t let me down!

  She paused to assess him again. Let there be no rage in him as a result of his deductions! If he’s angry, then his prognosis plummets into an abyss. But there was no anger: not one iota. Rather, he demonstrated a kind of clinical interest in Rose’s plots.

  “Ari won’t take your place, Jess,” he said flatly.

  “Why?”

  “He’s not in your class, and everybody but Rose already knows that. Most importantly, Ari knows it.”

  “You’re exactly right, Walter.”

  “At least I can see you for dinner tonight.”

  Her face fell. “Oh, Walter, I can’t! I’m dining out. But I’ll be there for breakfast at seven tomorrow.”

  Dinner that evening was at Delia’s condo, and consisted of pizza with a side salad and a bottle of chilled sparkling wine.

  “The wine snobs say Cold Duck is rubbish,” said Delia cheerily as she poured from the champagne-shaped bottle, “but I really like it—sweet, fizzy, pure Keats.”

  Jess eyed her friend warily. “I’m not going there, Delia, so don’t try to lure me. Though I do agree with you—I love Cold Duck, no matter how the snobs put it down.”

  “Have you ever partaken of a thousand-dollar bottle of wine?”

  Jess blinked. “Never.”

  “We dealt with the theft of a thousand-dollar bottle of wine once,” Delia said dreamily. “Its owner had bought it at auction, and never intended to drink it—my personal theory at the time—it was my first case in Holloman—was that he simply got carried away at the auction the way people do. He certainly wasn’t a wine collector!”

  “Beaded bubbles winking at the brim!” Jess cried.

  “Eh?”

  “That’s your Keats lure, ha ha ha!”

  “It is too! But the thousand-dollar wine is now at issue!” Delia said, a little put out. “Who took it?”

  “His wife put it in a Beef Burgundy,” Jess said.

  Delia looked disgusted. “Oh, you party-pooper!”

  “I bet the marriage was rocky for a while.”

  “No, he was too nice a guy.” She peered at Jess. “However, a bit of light-hearted badinage has done you good. You were looking quite bothered when you came in tonight, Jess.”

  “I was feeling it too, but a dose of Delia and Cold Duck has fixed me right up.”

  “Can you talk about the problem?”

  “Oh, yes. The NIH has me on their list of inspectors of some grant applications. They don’t usually involve weekend trips, but there’s a maverick in Boston, and I’m a last-minute substitution member of a committee going to Boston tomorrow morning. It kills my own schedule, but that wasn’t the real problem. Walter was.”

  Delia lined up olive pits on the edge of her plate. “I’m changing my pizzeria—pits, yet! What’s Walter’s peril, dear?”

  “He can get upset if I’m absent overnight, though I can’t equate him with a small child in any way, including how his mind works,” Jess said, glad to have an outside ear. “Right at this very moment he’s decided to make breakthroughs in all directions—Delia, it’s so exciting! The last thing I need is an upset Walte
r, and he’s so aware that I think he expects Ari Melos will send him back to the Asylum as soon as my back is turned.”

  “Is it likely?”

  “No, I really believe he’s safe. If Ari decides to lock him up anywhere, it would be in HI, not the Asylum—he hasn’t shown any need for Asylum-style confinement in—oh, three years!”

  “Then why don’t you lock him up before you go? You say he trusts you. I may be getting the wrong message, but it sounds as if it’s the Asylum Walter’s afraid of, far more than being locked in his room at HI. Can’t you talk him into letting you lock him in? Or have I got it wrong?”

  “No, you’re right. The trouble is, I promised that he’d be free while I was away. I’d have to go back on my word to him.”

  “Then it’s a good test of his ethics,” Delia said shrewdly. “If he’s making all these exciting breakthroughs, he ought to be able to cope with a disappointment or two as well.”

  Jess accepted another glass of Cold Duck. “Oh, Delia, you’re asking for a lot! I didn’t choose the road map metaphor for no reason—he and I are journeying through utter terra incognita, and I don’t call his brain unknown country for nothing. On many levels Walter’s thinking is highly developed, even sophisticated—he can read and understand technical, factual books, and has a deep appreciation for classical music, though popular music bores him, I think because it lacks mathematics. Yet on other levels his thought processes are vestigial, even alien. For instance, he slavers at Shakespeare’s use of language, but can’t appreciate any of the core emotions behind Shakespeare, like Hamlet’s Oedipus complex or Othello’s jealousy.”

  “An intellectual competent but an emotional imbecile?”

  “It’s not as simple as that, but … yes, something like.”

  “So if you leave Walter free, you’re not one hundred percent positive that he’ll survive. Though I think it’s other people you don’t trust far more than lack of faith in Walter.”

  The long, serious face lit up. “Yes, exactly!”

  It had been another hot, windless day that left a brown bank of smog hovering over the Sound, as smooth and glassy as a sheet of polished steel; the two women sat, chairs turned to the huge window and its view, and said nothing for some time. Old Father Reilly from St. Mary’s at Millstone came wandering along the stony beach with his two ancient beagle dogs, a sign that all was right with his world; a pity, that worlds like Jess’s were newer, vaguer, more unpredictable.