Now came strangenesses. After Malcolm and Susan reemerged, Mme Reynard announced it was time for a talent show, and though none much wished to take part, her enthusiasm outweighed their disinclination. She began, by reciting a number of Emily Dickinson poems she knew by heart: “How happy is the little stone, that rambles in the road alone.” She spoke from her deeper self and all were impressed by her memory, and how the words affected her. She was near tears when she said,
“I sing to use the waiting
“My bonnet but to tie
“And shut the door unto my house;
“No more to do have I,
“Till, his best step approaching,
“We journey to the day,
“And tell each other how we sang
“To keep the dark away.”
There was lively applause as Mme Reynard sat, mildly quaking, eyes gleaming with the gratification of the performer in triumph.
Joan elected to go next. She fetched a sheaf of loose paper and pencil. “Name something and I’ll draw it.”
Mme Reynard said, “Draw me.”
Joan quickly and expertly drew Mme Reynard. In the portrait she was as in life, sitting on the sofa with a drink in her hand, forward leaning, an affable yet mildly psychotic look in her eye. But it was not an unflattering likeness, and as the drawing was passed from hand to hand, a great many compliments were afforded Joan. Mme Reynard set the drawing safely to the side, saying she would cherish it always. She was straining to hold her head upright.
Julius stood to address the group. He said, “I’ve been sitting here wondering what I can share with you, but I can’t think of a single thing. This is embarrassing for me, as you can imagine, but I want you to know how much I’ve been enjoying myself here. Thank you for allowing me to sit in your company. I hope that I may continue to do so. That’s all.” He bowed and sat, and there was among the guests a heartening chatter, statements of fondness for the reticent PI. Julius translated the mood and was moved by it. Though he had not entertained anyone, he’d gone through the same emotional transfiguration as the entertainer, and he experienced an uncommon sense of fulfillment.
Frances stood, drink in hand. She was going to tell a story, she said.
“Is it a happy story?” Mme Reynard asked.
“No,” Frances said.
“What’s it about?”
“It’s about the time I set my parents’ house on fire.”
“Well,” said Mme Reynard.
“I’ve heard this before,” Joan said. “It’s a good one.”
The group waited. Frances sipped her gin and began. “My mother one day decided she hated me, and she was not adept at hiding this; in fact she had no thought to hide it; in further fact, she wished to share it. Her method was to ignore me, to such an extent that I now can only wonder at her sanity. I’m not saying she was averse to me—that she would avoid me. I’m saying she began to live her life as though I did not and had never existed. I would greet her and she would pretend I wasn’t there at all. She looked not at but through me. If I persisted in speaking to her she would leave the room, or the house.
“This went on for many months, and had what I believe was the desired result, which was for me to doubt the truth of my own existence. I was ten years old, eleven. Once I overheard my father pleading with her to address me, and she said sadly, ‘I’m sorry, darling, but I can’t do that, and I won’t.’ She couldn’t reconcile herself to aging and she disliked that I was favored by my father. I outshone her. That’s really all there was to it. She wanted to send me away but Father wouldn’t allow it, so her ignoring me was her revenge, and it was brilliant in its effectiveness.” Frances took another drink. “There were bright spots in my life. My governess, Olivia, and I were close, then, and Father was always kind, and sympathetic. But Olivia could only do so much, and Father was gone half the time, more than half the time; at some point each day I would see my mother but she wouldn’t see me and it began to damage me.
“Well, a birthday of mine occurred, and of course my mother did not bring me a gift, or attend my party, which was at our own house. Late that night I lay in my bed, surrounded by my presents and cards, and I was taken up by the most unpleasant, the most violent desperation. It was too great a feeling to bury; I had to act. I decided to set the house on fire. I should say I had no wish for Mother to burn, but I knew she would react, and this was my dream.
“Olivia was sleeping, and Mother was, and Father was out of town. I took a stick of kindling from the firebox in my room and stuck it in the glowing ashes of the hearth until it caught fire. I touched the flame to the curtains. Once they were alight, I went to tell Mother. I still had the smoldering kindling in my hand; I held it near her face and she woke up hacking. Her face was very frightful and ugly and when she sat up I told her, ‘Mother I’ve set my room on fire.’ She said nothing. ‘My room’s on fire, Mother,’ I said. Still she said nothing to me, but after a moment she rose from bed, rang the fire department, dressed, and quickly left the house. I watched from her window as she drove off into the night.
“Olivia was screaming, now. Her room was just to the side of mine, and the smoke woke her up. I returned to my room and found her batting at the wall of fire with my duvet cover. Poor Olivia, she was so frightened. I could hear the sirens, but they were a long way off, like a mosquito near your ear.
“The first thing the firemen did was kick down the front door, which was unlocked, and nowhere near the fire upstairs. Then they kicked down all the other doors, took axes to the house, and coated every inch of the interior with their fire hoses. Oil paintings blasted from the walls; statues toppled from the pedestals. It was the most thorough act of vandalism I’ll ever witness, I’m certain of it. Standing amid the hissing wreckage, the commissioner later explained that fire was the most insistent and insidious of the four elements, and that you could show it no mercy—which was fine, but the estate was destroyed, more or less. It took the whole summer and into the fall to restore it to its former state and it was years before it lost its smoky scent.
“I can remember listening to Olivia speaking with my mother on the telephone. Mother had driven to the airport and was waiting to board a flight for the Bahamas. Olivia said, ‘It’s one thing to care for a child, quite another to sleep across the hall from an arsonist. I’m not saying I won’t do it, but we’re going to need to discuss my wage.’ She listened awhile, then hung up, clapped her hands, and told me we were going to stay in a hotel, and that food would be brought to our rooms, and the television would be bright and loud, and there would be a pool for swimming and pastries with tea every afternoon. All these things were true.”
“But what happened to you?” asked Mme Reynard.
“Just that. We moved into a suite at the Four Seasons. I had the time of my life. There were no repercussions that I can recall. My mother remained in the Bahamas for the season. My father sent a psychiatrist to the hotel to speak with me. He asked why I’d done it and I told him and he said he understood and went away. That’s the story of my setting my childhood home on fire.”
Frances sat, and the group discussed the story. Mme Reynard said she enjoyed the tale as it provided an insight into Frances’s character, but it was ultimately unfulfilling in that there was no punishment rendered for what was a very serious, even an evil deed. Julius said it reminded him of Gone with the Wind, though he had never seen Gone with the Wind, but he had a sense that there was a narrative sameness occurring. Mme Reynard told him that beyond the fact of each story featuring a house fire he was wrong, but that Julius should see Gone with the Wind the first chance he got, as it was a classic that withstood what she called the very terrible test of time.
Now came Madeleine’s turn, only she, like Julius, had no talent to share, she claimed; she asked if she could be excused from the exercise and was told she could not. “Can’t we count the séance as my turn?” she said. The answer: no. “Well, can I just tell a story, too?” she asked, and it was granted she could, and she decided she would explain how it was she’d come to her line of work.
She said, “When I was eight years old I was sitting in the kitchen eating a bowl of cereal and my grandma walked into the room, and she was lime green. It clung to her skin but bled away when she moved, like a mist coming off her. I asked her what was the matter and she said, ‘Nothing, why?’ In a little while she said she was tired, and she went to lie down, and she closed her eyes and died. I didn’t tell anyone about it. A year later I saw a green man at the supermarket. I broke away from my mom to follow him at a distance, up and down the aisles. I followed him through the checkout and to the parking lot. He sat in his truck, turned it on, then off. He started jerking around in his seat. Foam was coming out of his mouth. I watched him die in his truck. A cop came, and I told him and my mom about the man’s greenness, and my grandma’s. The cop told my mom to take me to a hospital and she did, and a doctor heard me out, then put me under observation—three days and nights in a padded room. After that I pretended I couldn’t see the greenness anymore.”
“But you could,” said Mme Reynard.
“I could and still can.”
“Am I green?”
“You’re pink.”
“Hmm,” said Mme Reynard. She suggested that Madeleine should work in the medical field. “Think of all the lives you could save.”
Madeleine shook her head. “The greenness isn’t a signal that someone’s in danger of dying,” she explained, “it’s that they’re going to.”
Malcolm was made uncomfortable by the subject matter and decided the time had come for him to share his talent. He stood and performed a sleight-of-hand trick that gave the impression his thumb was detaching from, then reattaching to, his hand. The group found this wanting, and it was asked that he should give them something more dynamic. Mme Reynard encouraged him to tell a story, as Frances and Madeleine had. “What kind of story do you want to hear?” he asked.
“Sad and scary,” she replied immediately.
Malcolm stood awhile, gazing back in time, combing through his own particulars.