The moment is here. The one where you know, in your gut, that something very, very bad is about to happen. It’s just that you don’t know what the Bad Thing is, and so you couldn’t stop it even if you wanted to, but you know it’s coming.
They are all assembled–Pearl, Cornelia, Danae, Livia; the tipsy Marta and the drunk priest. There is silverware, and linen, and crystal, and more mulberry wine, a whole bunch more. A nice breeze has kicked up, to flirt with the curtains and chase off some of the humidity. It looks like a nice dinner. But we know better, Bad, Bad Lovers, we do, we do… and we’ve seen breezes cause trouble before. But it won’t happen all at once–remember: slow burn. And with that admonishment, herewith, Installment XXIII (finally, finally, we’re about to get some food on the table) of The Will of Venus (Otherwise Known as A Fairy-Tale for Superwomen).
Stop picking at the cornbread. We can all see you, and you won’t have any room left for this fancy feast Aunt Pearl has slaved over all the livelong day. Refill your glass, that’s fine. Fill it right on up, there’s more where that came from (Pearl and Cornelia have a big cellar). And if you need a little refresher before the wine takes hold of you completely, you can sneak off back to the Beginning of it All by clicking right here.
~
Aunt Cornelia bustled into the velvety dusk of the hallway. She was wearing the dress she reserved for Sundays, and parties, though she hadn’t been to a party in more than a decade. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright. Livia wondered if she might have a fever. She had done her hair differently–the severe, uncompromising bun had loosened. Tendrils curled at her temples, winding around the too-large ears. It seemed as though the hallway had somehow swallowed up the years and the bitterness that made Cornelia stoop.
Her hair looked brown instead of gray in the early nighttime, fitful light from somewhere picking up highlights and making it shine. Cornelia looked young, vibrant, and Livia knew that it had something to do with the priest–and maybe with the undercurrent of excitement that laced through her mother’s voice as she spoke in low tones out on the front porch.
“What y’all doin’ sittin’ there like bumps on a log?”
Cornelia’s voice was too loud and shrill in the half dark. Livia was afraid their mother would hear.
“I declare…come on in here and help Pearl…she’s doin’ this all by herself…”
Livia and Danae (the latter with a roll of her eyes) followed Cornelia down the hallway to the kitchen. The two figures on the front porch did not change position; not a stitch was dropped from their conversation—she hadn’t heard them after all.
~
Out on the porch, the cooling darkness received the clear, crystalline sound of two glasses clinking into its velvety depths and turned it back into silence before anyone heard. The darkness, and only the darkness, witnessed the conspiratorial glance exchanged as the sound was made. Then Marta and Father Clanning tipped their heads back in unison and drained the last drops of mulberry wine from their glasses.
The bottle was empty. Marta shoved it carelessly under her chair, along with the glasses. They couldn’t show up at the table with wine glasses in their hands, Cornelia would have a fit… Father Clanning smirked and laughed, a stronger, more vibrant sound than he had made before; he felt more comfortable with the lioness now, or maybe it was the wine gone to his head. He hunched his shoulders like a guilty schoolboy and followed Marta into the darkened hallway.
~
The dining room was long and narrow, a space that almost exactly contained the heavy oak table with its ornately carved legs that terminated in clawed feet. Covering the length of it was a white linen tablecloth, onto which had been laid every eating utensil and serving implement imaginable. The floor-to-ceiling windows were open but shielded by leafy branches layered so thick by the years that barely any breeze made it through.
The tablecloth glowed strangely and Father Clanning’s eyes had difficulty distinguishing one place setting from another, the cutlery swimming together, dancing like a picket fence when you drive past it fast in a car.
He hoped his rusty table etiquette would pass Cornelia’s undoubtedly difficult scrutiny. After all, he was her guest. Marta could eat with her fingers, or even sink her lovely face into the mounds of succulent food on her plate and no one would say a word. Even after decades of not thinking about women in the way he had begun to think drunkenly about Marta, Father Clanning knew that. Marta could do whatever she liked, and no one would lift a finger to stop her.
More probably, though, she would simply eat with the same fork, the same knife, throughout the entire meal, not giving a fig for etiquette. She would be conscious of her victory–Father Clanning had drunk wine on the porch with her for an hour before setting foot into the house; he was going to give her money so that she could leave. She might even stare a contemptuous challenge into Cornelia’s cataractic eyes if caught licking her knife or not cutting her meat into small enough pieces, and then keep right on doing whatever it was that offended Cornelia. She was leaving anyway.
Livia stood at the corner of the table closest to the door. Dressed in olive green, she was a somber, discordant note against her sister’s brilliant blue, against her mother’s beauty and the priest’s flamboyant drunkenness, amid the brilliant riot of flowers in window boxes, on the table, on the commode at the back of the room, where even more serving utensils awaited summons.
Livia stared gravely back at the befuddled priest; her blue eyes looked black. Danae was already seated, and the priest’s questioning gaze fell next on her. Marta’s bright voice, in answer to Father Clanning’s incredulous stare, raised eyebrows. Marta’s head tilted back, her lips opening like a split plum around the words,
“These are my daughters.”
Father Clanning was astonished, and intrigued. He had difficulty imagining wonderful, strange Marta as anyone’s mother.
Cornelia seated herself ceremoniously at the head of the table, trying not to look at the two unopened bottles of mulberry wine. Pearl had put them at the center, but Cornelia had picked them up and moved them as far away from her place as she could. The sheer white curtains moved guiltily back and forth in the leftovers of the early breeze, as though Cornelia had invoked their support in her indignation over the offending bottles, and they were undecided about whether or not to give it. Crystal wine goblets stood beside every place except Cornelia’s, including Danae’s and Livia’s. Danae’s eyebrows rose, her smile a grown-up’s.
Livia was probably the only one who remembered much about the dinner. Cornelia, offended, had walked out of the dining room, up the stairs, and into her bedroom halfway through it (they had heard her shut the door). She had not come back down. Even Danae had been drunk, and had had to be escorted to the bathroom, and then put to bed, by Pearl.
But that had happened later. Much later.
~
More to come, Bad, Bad Lovers, more to come.
Right here, IN TWO WEEKS’ TIME, same bad channel, same bad, bad place…
Till then, y’all be good. Or if you can’t be good, then please, please, please be very, very bad.
~
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