A House Like a Lotus Read online

  There are Waterford chandeliers and candelabra, and paintings by Max, and also by Picasso and Pissarro and even a Piero. And portraits. Southerners do seem to have a great many portraits, and Max had more than most.

  But, until last Christmastime, Beau Allaire was no more than a name to us.

  Early winter was miserable, cold and rainy and dank. In Cowpertown it seemed as though the sun never shone, and the fluorescent lights at school glared. Nobody turned on any strobe lights for me. And I certainly didn’t have that inner luminosity Max saw in the portrait of me in the seashell, a luminosity which Max brought out in me. December was grey day after grey day, with fog rolling in from the sea, so bad that Daddy wouldn’t let us take the boat to Cowpertown but drove us the fifteen or so miles to Mulletville to take the school bus from there, and we hated that.

  And then Sandy and Rhea came for Christmas, and Uncle Dennys and Aunt Lucy, bringing Charles with them. It was wonderful having Charles home for three weeks. He’s by far my closest sibling. But when Uncle Dennys and Aunt Lucy decided that Kate needed to live with a family and stop being an only child for a few years, they suggested that Charles go to Boston as a sort of exchange, partly because they didn’t want to be completely without children, and partly because Charles is a scientist, or will be, and the science department at Cowpertown High leaves a great deal to be desired.

  It was our turn to have everybody for Christmas. One of the good things about being back in the United States is getting together for holidays. Almost all of us. Daddy’s parents are dead, and his family is pretty well scattered. But there are Mother’s parents, who are also scientists. Our grandfather is an astrophysicist, and our grandmother a microbiologist. Then there’re Sandy and Rhea. And Dennys and Lucy. Dennys and Sandy are twins, and very close. Mother’s youngest brother, the one Charles is named after, is off somewhere on some kind of secret mission, we don’t know where. Anyhow, when the larger family is gathered together, it makes for a full house. This past year our grandparents didn’t come, because our grandfather was just getting over pneumonia. We missed them, but it was a lot of people, in any case.

  The morning after everybody arrived, Sandy and I were alone in the kitchen, because Daddy had taken everybody else out in his cutter to show them around the island. Sandy and I warmed our toes at the fire and had one last cup of cocoa made from some special chocolate he and Rhea’d picked up in Holland.

  The phone rang, and I answered it. ‘Sandy, for you.’

  ‘Me? Who on earth would be calling me here? I told Washington under no circumstances …’ he muttered as he took the phone. ‘Max!’ His voice boomed out with pleasure.

  When he finished talking (I washed the dishes to give him privacy), he rubbed his blond beard and smiled. ‘Polly, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine. I think you’d get on.’

  Sandy knew things at school were not going well for me. He’d pumped me thoroughly, and it was not easy for me to keep anything from my favorite uncle. ‘Who? Where?’

  ‘A painter. A very good painter. And not far from here, at the other end of the Island, Beau Allaire. Want to drive over with me?’

  I’d go anywhere with Sandy. ‘Sure. Now?’

  ‘Anything else on your social calendar?’

  Coming from Xan, that would have been snide. From Sandy it was okay. ‘I didn’t know anybody was living at Beau Allaire.’

  ‘Max has been back only a few weeks. I want to find out what on earth has brought Max to Beau Allaire.’

  We drove through the stark December day. We never have snow on Benne Seed, but winter can be raw.

  ‘Max’s family built the hospital in Cowpertown,’ Sandy said. ‘It’s named for Max’s sister, Minerva Allaire Horne, who died young and beautiful. But I suppose you know all about that.’

  I shook my head. ‘No. Only that it was given by a family with pots of money and Daddy says it’s an unusually good hospital for a place like Cowpertown. He knows some of the doctors there. And he and Mother were saying it was too bad nobody lived in Beau Allaire.’

  ‘Max has had it kept up. The land is rented for cotton. And there are gardeners and two old-time Southern faithful retainers, Nettie and Ovid, like characters out of a movie. Max usually comes for a week or so each winter, but Beau Allaire hasn’t really been lived in for years. Max said she was staying all winter. Wonder why.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘Maximiliana Sebastiane Horne. The parents gave both daughters absurdly romantic names. Minerva Allaire—Allaire was the mother’s name and the plantation came from her—was always known as M.A., and Maximiliana Sebastiane is called Max, or Maxa, or sometimes Metaxa. Metaxa is a rather powerful Greek brandy, and it’s not a bad name for her.’

  We drove up a long driveway of crushed shells, lined with great oaks leaning their upper branches over the drive till they touched and made a green tunnel. The car crunched over the broken shells. As we drew near, I saw the graceful lines of a verandah, and Sandy pointed out the beautiful fanlight over the door. ‘And eleven chimneys, count them. The architect was well aware of the dampness that can seep into an island house.’

  We got out of the car and started toward the door just as a sports car pulled up behind us. Out of it emerged a tall woman wearing a dark green velvet cape lined with some kind of soft, light fur, with the hood partway up over midnight-black hair. Her light grey eyes were large and rimmed darkly with what I later learned was kohl.

  ‘Good enough for Isak Dinesen, good enough for me.’

  Isak Dinesen was a Danish writer who used to be famous, and Max said that the wheel would turn and she’d come into her own again.

  Now Max held her arms out, wide, and so did Sandy, and they ran and embraced each other. It was theatrical, but it was also real, and I envied the freedom that allowed them to be so uninhibited. I stood watching their pleasure in each other, feeling that I shouldn’t have come in old jeans and a yellow sweater that was too small for me.

  After a moment Sandy and the woman broke apart, and he introduced me. ‘Max, this is Polly O’Keefe, my sister’s firstborn. Pol, this is Maximiliana Sebastiane Horne.’

  I held out my hand. ‘Hello, Mrs. Horne.’

  She took my hands in hers, and from her hands I realized that she was older than I’d thought. ‘Max, please, or Maxa. I’m not Mrs. Horne. My husband was Davin Tomassi, but I had already made a start as a painter when we married and he wanted me to keep my own name.’

  He was. So she was a widow.

  ‘Come in, come in, don’t stand out here in the cold.’ She opened the heavy front door, which creaked. ‘I’ll have to get this oiled,’ she said, leading us into a large hall.

  Sandy took my elbow. ‘Look at this hall, Pol, it’s an architectural gem, with a groin-vaulted plaster ceiling and beautifully proportioned woodwork.’

  It was gorgeous, with the walls papered a color I later learned was Pompeian red.

  Max opened another door, to a long, high library, the kind of room we’d love to build onto our house, where we’ve long ago run out of book space. But this wasn’t a beach-house room. It was so high-ceilinged that there was a ladder which could be moved along a wooden rail so the books on the top shelves could be reached. There was a fireplace with a wood fire burning, though the room still smelled and felt damp. The mantelpiece was Georgian and beautiful, and over it was a portrait, in a heavy gold frame, of a young woman with black hair, wearing a low-cut ivory gown. She was so lovely it made you draw in your breath, and I assumed it was Max when she was young.

  Max took off her cloak and flung it over a mahogany and red-velvet sofa, then went to the wall near the fireplace and pulled on a long, embroidered piece of cloth. A bellpull. I’d read about bellpulls, and when our TV worked I’d seen them in plays with Victorian settings, but this was the first one I’d seen in real life.

  I studied the portrait again, and Max said, ‘My sister, Minerva Allaire. M.A. was truly beautiful.’ She perched on a low chair with a hassock covered
in petit point. She wore narrow black pants and a black cashmere cardigan over a white, softly ruffled blouse. And yet, while I knew she was quite old, older than my parents, she did not seem old, because a tremendous, sunny energy emanated from her.

  There was a knock on the door and a woman came in, a woman who somehow went with the house and the bellpull. She was stocky and had grey-brown hair, short and crisply curly. She bowed elaborately. ‘Madame rang?’

  Max laughed. ‘Don’t be dour, Ursula. It’s damp and cold and this house hasn’t been lived in for thousands of years.’

  ‘Madame would like some consommé?’ the woman suggested.

  ‘Consommé with a good dollop of sherry,’ Max agreed. ‘And some of Nettie’s benne biscuits.’

  Sandy asked, ‘Max still bullying you, Urs?’

  The woman smiled, and the heaviness in her face lightened. ‘What would Max be like if she didn’t bully us all?’

  ‘Ursula, this is my niece, Polly O’Keefe. Pol, this is Dr. Heschel.’

  I’d thought she was some kind of servant, a housekeeper.

  She shook hands with me, a good, firm clasp. Her fingers were long and delicate and tapered, but very strong. ‘I’m glad to meet you, Polly. Your Uncle Dennys and I are colleagues.’

  Well, then, she had to be a neurosurgeon. I took another look.

  Sandy said, ‘The world of neurosurgery is small. Dennys and I, as usual, both have connections with Max and Ursula. Davin Tomassi was a colleague of mine. So, separately, we’ve known Max and Urs for a long time. We’ll have a terrific reunion.’

  Dr. Heschel asked eagerly, ‘Dennys is here, too?’

  ‘The whole kit and caboodle of us. I don’t know if the name rang a bell with you, Urs, but Polly’s father is the O’Keefe who’s done such amazing work with regeneration. His lab is now full of squid and octopuses. I suppose I have to take it on faith that their neurological system resembles ours.’

  Dr. Heschel flung out her arms. ‘Good Lord, when we left New York and came to Benne Seed I thought we were coming to the wilderness, and here is not only Dennys but a scientist I’ve long wanted to meet. Before I get overexcited, I’d better get out to the kitchen and see about that consommé.’

  ‘We’ll have a party,’ Max said as the doctor went out. ‘We’ll bring Beau Allaire back to life with a real party.’

  Sandy and Max talked about mutual friends all over the world until a frail old black man came in, carrying a silver tray which looked much too heavy for him. He wore rather shiny black trousers and a white coat. He put the tray on a marble-topped table in front of a long sofa, looked at Max with loving concern, and left.

  Dr. Heschel sat in front of the tray and handed out cups of consommé in translucent china. I thanked her for mine.

  ‘Call her Ursula,’ Max ordered. ‘She gets enough doctor-this and doctor-that in New York. People treat neurosurgeons as though they were gods. And many of them fall for it.’

  Dr. Heschel—Ursula—responded mildly: ‘Your iconoclasm takes care of that.’

  ‘Are you on vacation, Urs?’ Sandy asked her.

  ‘Leave of absence.’ And, as though to forestall further questioning, she added, ‘I was overdue a sabbatical. I’m glad to see you still have your beard, Sandy.’

  ‘I grow tired of it,’ he said, ‘but it’s the best way to tell Dennys and me apart. We still look very much alike. Max, show Polly some of your paintings.’

  Max shrugged, so that her thin shoulder blades showed sharply under the cashmere. It looked to me as though she needed a doctor handy, though an internist would likely have been more help than a neurosurgeon.

  ‘Most of my best stuff is in museums or private collections,’ Max said. ‘Contrary to opinion, I do have to earn a living. M.A.’s untimely death caused my father to start a hospital in her memory, and that’s where the money went. Not that I begrudge it.’

  Sandy gave a snort and turned it into a sneeze.

  ‘You ran through a good bit on your own.’ Dr. Heschel —Ursula—smiled.

  ‘True, and I enjoyed it. But now I have to work for the finer things of life.’ She looked at both of them and burst into laughter. ‘Like many filthy-rich people, I tend to cry poor.’ She smiled at me. ‘Never believe people who tell you they have no money, Polly. People who don’t have it seldom mention the fact. People who do, tend to be embarrassed about it, and so deny it, especially in front of someone like Sandy, who spends his life fighting the big international megacorps. Come on, and I’ll show you some of my work.’

  ‘Don’t forget the painting of Rio Harbor,’ Ursula said.

  ‘First I want to show her my self-portrait.’ Max drained her cup and put it back on the tray. ‘Come on.’

  I followed her into the big hall and up a curving staircase and then into a room which was as large as the library.

  There was a huge, carved four-poster bed, with a sofa across the foot. I turned and saw another high fireplace, with a large, white fur rug in front of it, and I could imagine Max, in black, lying on the white rug and staring into the fire. The fire was laid, and there was a copper bucket of fat pine beside it. The far end of the room had a big desk, a chaise longue, some comfortable chairs upholstered in smoky-rose velvet. A long wall of French windows opened onto the verandah and the ocean view.

  On the wall over the desk was a portrait. I knew it was Max because she’d said so. She was as young in this picture, or almost, as the girl in the portrait in the library, and they did look very alike, with the same dark hair and light grey eyes and alabaster skin. Max was thinner than M.A., and she was looking down at something she held in one hand. A skull.

  It reminded me of etchings of medieval philosophers in their studies, with skulls on their desks and maybe a skeleton in the corner, contemplating life and death. It was a beautiful painting. A shaft of light touched the skull, and the shape of bone was clean and pure.

  ‘I was a morbid young woman in many ways, Polly, and felt it would do me no harm to cast a cool eye on my own mortality. It did keep me from wasting time as I might otherwise have done. I’ve had an interesting life, and I’ve had my fair share of vicissitudes, but it hasn’t been dull and it hasn’t been wasted. What are you going to do with yourself when you finish your schooling?’ She sat on the foot of the chaise longue.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘Where do your interests lie?’

  ‘Almost everywhere. That can be a real problem. I’m interested in archaeology and anthropology and literature and the theatre. I pick up languages easily. I’m not a scientist, like my parents.’

  ‘But you’re intelligent.’

  ‘Oh, yes. But I haven’t found my focus.’

  ‘You’ve got a couple of years,’ Max said. ‘When the time comes, you’ll find it.’ She got up. ‘Come, I’ll show you the picture that Urs likes.’ On the way she pointed out some of the other pictures. A Hogarth. A de Chirico sketch. A Van Gogh. ‘Fortunately, the Islanders don’t know how valuable they are—just Maxa’s junk. Even with Nettie and Ovid living over the garage, we aren’t immune to burglars. If I’m short of cash, I sell one of the pictures. I do have very extravagant tastes.’

  The painting of Max was what is called representational. The one of the harbor at Rio was expressionist, I think, with vivid colors which looked one way straight on and another if you glanced sidewise.

  ‘Why isn’t this in a museum?’ I was awed by it.

  ‘Because I won’t let it go,’ Max said. ‘I have to keep a few things. Urs wants to buy it, and if I sold it to anyone it would be to her.’ She looked at the painting. ‘She’ll get it soon enough.’

  We went back out into the hall, and as we started down the stairs I saw something on the landing I hadn’t noticed on the way up, a wood carving on a marble pedestal, of a man, with his head thrown back in laughter and delight.

  ‘That’s the Laughing Christ of Baki.’ Max paused. ‘I had a reproduction made. The original is life-size and gives the effect of
pure joy. It’s probably nearly ten thousand years old.’

  ‘The Laughing Christ?’

  ‘The Bakians simply assumed, when the missionaries told them about the Son of God, that it was their statue, which had never before had a name. Anthropology is one of my hobbies, Polly. Someday I’ll show you the sketch books I’ve made on my travels. This statue is one of my most favorite possessions.’

  ‘I love it,’ I said, ‘I absolutely love it.’

  We went on downstairs and back to the library, and Max had another cup of consommé, complaining that Nettie hadn’t put enough sherry in it. ‘She disapproves. Nettie and Ovid are growing old, and I’d like to get someone to help them, but they won’t hear of it. Urs likes to cook, and Nettie and Ovid come in after dinner and do the washing up, and they bring us our breakfast. Nettie is a firm believer in a good breakfast, grits and fried tomatoes and eggs and anything else she thinks she can get me to eat.’

  ‘You could do with a few more pounds,’ Sandy said.

  Max sat on a low chair and stretched her legs out to the fire. ‘So you and Rhea are here for Christmas, Sandy? How can you take all those children?’

  ‘Very happily,’ Sandy said. ‘We’d hoped to have children of our own, but that didn’t happen to be possible.’

  ‘Oh, God, Sandy, I’m sorry.’ Max put her hands to her mouth.

  ‘It’s probably just as well in our line of work,’ he said. ‘We have to travel too much of the time. And with all our nephews and nieces, we don’t do too badly.’

  I’d wondered about Sandy and Rhea not having kids of their own.

  He looked at his watch. ‘We’d better go, Pol.’

  Max put her hand very lightly on my shoulder. ‘Come back and see me, little one, and we’ll talk about anthropology.’

  ‘All right,’ I mumbled. But I knew I wouldn’t. Not unless Max called me. And she did.

  But not until she and Ursula had joined the throng for Christmas. As soon as Mother and Daddy heard that Max and Ursula were at Beau Allaire, and about the connections with Sandy and Dennys, they invited them for Christmas.