The Secret History - Donna Tartt [169]
“Do they have her doped up or something?” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she doesn’t seem very upset, does she?”
“Of course,” said Mrs. Corcoran reflectively, “of course, we’re all just out of our minds, really. And I certainly hope that no mother will ever have to endure what I have for the past few nights. But the weather does seem to be breaking, and we’ve met so many lovely people, and the local merchants have all been generous in so many little ways.…”
“Actually,” said Henry, when the station cut to a commercial, “she photographs rather well, doesn’t she?”
“She looks like a tough customer.”
“She’s from Hell,” Charles said drunkenly.
“Oh, she’s not that bad,” said Francis.
“You just say that because she kisses up to you all the time,” Charles said. “Because of your mother and stuff.”
“Kiss up? What are you talking about? Mrs. Corcoran doesn’t kiss up to me.”
“She’s awful,” Charles said. “It’s a horrible thing to tell your kids that money’s the only thing in the world, but it’s a disgrace to work for it. Then toss ’em out without a penny. She never gave Bunny one red—”
“That’s Mr. Corcoran’s fault, too,” said Camilla.
“Well, yeah, maybe. I don’t know. I just never met such a bunch of greedy, shallow people. You look at them and think, oh, what a tasteful, attractive family but they’re just a bunch of zeros, like something from an ad. They’ve got this room in their house,” Charles said, turning to me, “called the Gucci Room.”
“What?”
“Well, they painted it with a dado, sort of, those awful Gucci stripes. It was in all kinds of magazines. House Beautiful had it in some ridiculous article they did on Whimsy in Decorating or some absurd idea—you know, where they tell you to paint a giant lobster or something on your bedroom ceiling and it’s supposed to be very witty and attractive.” He lit a cigarette. “I mean, that’s exactly the kind of people they are,” he said. “All surface. Bunny was the best of them by a long shot but even he—”
“I hate Gucci,” said Francis.
“Do you?” said Henry, glancing up from his reverie. “Really? I think it’s rather grand.”
“Come on, Henry.”
“Well, it’s so expensive, but it’s so ugly too, isn’t it? I think they make it ugly on purpose. And yet people buy it out of sheer perversity.”
“I don’t see what you think is grand about that.”
“Anything is grand if it’s done on a large enough scale,” said Henry.
I was walking home that night, paying no attention to where I was going, when a large, sulky fellow approached me near the apple trees in front of Putnam House. He said: “Are you Richard Papen?”
I stopped, looked at him, said that I was.
To my astonishment, he punched me in the face, and I fell backward in the snow with a thump that knocked me breathless.
“Stay away from Mona!” he shouted at me. “If you go near her again, I’ll kill you. You understand me?”
Too stunned to reply, I stared up at him. He kicked me in the ribs, hard, and then trudged sullenly away—footsteps crunching through the snow, a slamming door.
I looked up at the stars. They seemed very far away. Finally, I struggled to my feet—there was a sharp pain in my ribs, but nothing seemed broken—and limped home in the dark.
I woke late the next morning. My eye hurt when I rolled on my cheek. I lay there for a while, blinking in the bright sun, as confused details of the previous night floated back to me like a dream; then I reached for my watch on the night table and saw that it was late, almost noon, and why had no one been by to get me?
I got up, and as I did my reflection rose to meet me, head-on