999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [33]
Mother was so distraught, Mrs. Dulne had to catch her, and hold her in a comforting embrace.
There was no Mercedes at the front of the house, nor had there been any Mercedes in the drive. Yet Graeme stubbornly insisted he’d seen it, too. He’d seen something, silvery-green, erratic in motion, shaped like a car, disappearing by quick degrees as it approached the house.
Poor Mother. After the false alarm of her friend in the Mercedes, she was ill, exhausted, for several days. Then rising from her bed abruptly and filled with energy when Father informed her that important visitors were expected at Cross Hill in a week’s time to confer with him about re-presenting his case to the state attorney general. (He’d accumulated new data, new evidence, Father said. Proof that his key informers had perjured themselves in court. Proof that the original indictments brought against him, by a biased grand jury, had been fraudulent from the start.) Mother cried, “We can’t let them see these shameful rooms! We must do something.” Of course she would have wished to redecorate those downstairs rooms that were in use—but there wasn’t the money. Instead, her hair tied back gaily in a scarf, in loose-fitting cotton slacks and an old shirt of Stephen’s, Mother led a housecleaning team of Mrs. Dulne and the children through several rooms; concentrating, for practical purposes, on the glass-enclosed breakfast room overlooking Crescent Pond where Father intended to meet with his colleagues. None of us had seen Mother so girlish and enthusiastic in months—in years! Her eyes, though slightly bloodshot, shone. Her complexion, beneath the caked makeup, was fresh, glowing. Within two days, the filth-encrusted lattice windows of the breakfast room were scrubbed so that sunlight rayed through unimpeded; the parquet floor, long layered in grime, was partway cleaned and polished; the long antique cherrywood table was polished, and ten handsome chairs, not precisely matching, but in good condition, were set about it. The aged, rotted silk curtains were removed, and Mother and Mrs. Dulne, a skilled seamstress, cleverly refashioned newer curtains from another part of the house, a bright cheerful chintz, to hang in their place. When Father saw what Mother and the rest of us had accomplished, he stared in genuine surprise and gratitude. Tears welled in his eyes. “Veronica, how can I thank you? All of you—you’ve worked magic.” In boyish delight, he snatched up Mother’s hands to kiss them; hesitating only for an instant when he saw how white they were, how thin and puckered, like an elderly woman’s, from hours of scrubbing in detergent water.
“Do you love me, then, Roderick?” Mother asked anxiously, in a way mortifying to her children to witness. “Am I a good wife to you, despite all?”
But, poor Mother!—within days, all her labor was undone.
Somehow, particles of dust, dirt, outright grime shifted back into the corners of the breakfast room. A sour odor prevailed of decaying matter. Wild birds, seduced by the cleaned windowpanes into imagining there were no glass barriers, flew into the windows, breaking their necks; in melancholy feather-heaps, they lay on the floor. Rain, blown through the broken windowpanes, had stained and warped the parquet; soaked and stained the chairs’ cushioned seats. Even the bright chintz curtains were frayed and grimy as if they’d been hanging there for years. Mother rushed about,