The Genius (23 page)

NOW DAVID HAS A MYSTERY.

More than one. So many mysteries that he can barely contain himself, and when he lies awake that night, it isn’t from fear but from excitement. He can be an explorer, like Roger Dollar. He will make a plan; he will—as the detective on the radio show says—get to the bottom of this.

He begins by making a list of questions.

Who is the girl?

Why does she look weird?

How did she get in the house?

How old is she?

Where is she now?

Why did Mother react the way she did?

Why did Father react the way
he
did?

Why did Mother grow angry at Father?

Why did they ignore David for the rest of that evening? (Actually, that

question needs no answer. They always ignore him.)

The questions flap around his head like owls whooping
who who who, how how how, why why why
.

He knows one thing for sure: he cannot ask Mother or Father. He feels certain that to ask is to earn a whipping. The same applies to Delia. He must seek out the answers on his own. And he must be very careful, because he has the feeling that Mother will not tolerate one ounce of mischief.

First he gathers information. The next night at dinner David observes his parents, watching for anything unusual. They eat barley soup and roast beef and the tiny pasta ears that the cook makes. Father has his purple drink early. When he motions for another Mother gives him an evil stare, and he changes his request to a half a glass. Otherwise all goes normally.

At least until the end of the meal. Then—instead of parting, as they usually do, Father to his study and Mother to her sewing room—both of them rise and head out the same door, the one that leads to the east wing of the house. David would like to follow, but Delia arrives to escort him to his bath.

Afterward he climbs into bed. Delia asks if he wants a story and he says no thank you. He cannot wait for her to leave, and when she does he counts to fifty, then slips quietly from underneath the blanket and stands in his socks, shivering, strategizing.

The house has four stories. Like his bedroom, Mother’s sewing room is on the third floor. Father’s study is on the fourth. David reckons that they are not likely to meet in either of those places; they have changed their pattern, and will probably choose a third place. But where?

The first floor has a foyer where guests take cocktails. There are lots of rooms hung with paintings, one of which has the family portraits: his grandfather and great-grandfather, as well as great-uncles, great-great-uncles, men stretching back almost a hundred years, an inconceivable amount of time. There is Solomon Muller, smiling kindly. Beside him, his brothers: Adolph with the crooked nose and Simon with the warts and Bernard with the bushy balloons of hair at either side of his head. Papa Walter, looking like he has eaten too much peppery food. Father’s portrait is halfway done, David knows. Father has shown him where it will go once completed. And yours will go here. And your son’s, there. David saw the empty panels as windows into the future.

The second floor does not seem a likely meeting place: aside from the dining room and the kitchen, it is mostly taken up by the ballroom, which stays shuttered and dark all year, except for the night when Mother throws her Autumn Ball. Then the doors swing open and the featherdusters fly. Chairs are unbelted and unstacked, tables erected, linens spread, silver polished and aligned. The orchestra arrives and the room fills with swishing silk of all colors. Last year David was allowed to attend for the first time. Everybody fawned over him in his coat. He waltzed with Mother. They gave him wine; he fell asleep and woke up the next morning in his bed. He feels confident assuming that his parents will not have their meeting there.

The third floor is his bedroom, Mother’s sewing room, and lots of guest rooms. That is what his room is: a guest room they have made into a special room for him. You are always a welcome guest, says Father. David’s not sure what that means. Also on the third floor are the library, the music room, the Round Room, the radio room (where they spend Family Night), and many rooms full of breakable objects whose purpose he has yet to discern. All of these seem too small and ordinary to contain an event David expects to be momentous.

The fourth floor, the top floor, belongs to his parents’ private suites. It is a realm seldom visited and redolent of unanswered questions. He will try there first.

It’s not an easy operation. He cannot take the elevator; too much noise. He cannot take the east stairs, because servants use them to go up and down, and if they see him, he will be returned to bed. The south stairwell is near Delia’s room—she, too, has a guest room, unlike the rest of the help, whose rooms are in the basement. She leaves her door open at night, so that if David needs something he can call her with the bell. That way, too, she can hear him screaming when he sees monsters. Surely she will hear him if he walks past. He wraps his blanket around his shoulders and thinks.

Sometimes Delia has visitors in her room. David can hear them laughing, can taste the smoke drifting down the hall. He could wait until they arrived and hope to slip by unnoticed…

No. Tonight she might not have any visitors, and even if she does, who knows when they will come. He has already wasted too much time. He needs a different plan.

Down the hall is a bathroom adjacent to Delia’s room. The toilet there has a big chain you pull on, and it makes a lot of noise, enough to cover a quick dash from there to the stairs. A problem: he has his own bathroom. Using a different one will arouse Delia’s suspicions. What would Roger Dollar do?

As usual, Delia’s door is halfway open. He knocks. She says to come in, sounding friendly; when she sees that it is him, she frowns and asks what’s wrong.

“I need to use the bathroom.”

Her frown deepens. “Then use it, then.”

“There’s no paper,” he says.

She crushes out her cigarette and turns over her book and sighs, flicking a finger at the hallway behind him. “Use mine, then.”

He thanks her and says goodnight. She does not answer.

He closes her door on his way out. Not all the way; that would arouse her suspicion.

He goes to the bathroom. It’s not hard to pee when you want to. He wads up some paper and throws it in the bowl. Then he takes a deep breath and pulls the chain, bringing a roar of water and eight seconds of freedom. He goes.

He does not stop moving until he has reached the fourth-floor landing. He tiptoes down the hall until he comes to two pairs of large, wooden doors, each carved with the family crest, separated by twenty-five feet of satiny wallpaper: the entrances to his parents’ private suites.

Behind one door, his father is talking.

David presses his ear to the door but cannot understand the conversation. The door is too heavy and thick. He must get inside. But how? He remembers that the two suites are connected by an internal passageway. If he enters one suite, he could hide in that passageway and listen. Success depends on whether he chooses the right suite to begin with. Otherwise he will walk straight into them, and he will be in hot water. He listens at the other set of carved doors. The voices sound stronger—still incomprehensible, though—leading him to conclude that his best bet is to go through Mother’s room.

His heart speeds up as he reaches for the doorknob, turns, and pushes.

It is bolted from the inside.

Now what? He scans the hallway for another option, and right away he finds one: a closet. He checks to make sure that he can fit inside. Then he goes to the door of his mother’s suite and presses the buzzer.

The voices inside cease. Footsteps approach. David scampers into the closet and closes the door. He waits in the darkness.

“Damn you,” he hears his father say, “I gave”—the snap of a deadbolt—

“instructions”—the squeal of a door—“not to be—”

Silence.

The door closes.

David lets out his breath. He counts to fifty, exits the closet, and goes to the doors, which he prays his father has forgotten to lock.

He has.

In David goes, moving stealthily across the large Persian carpet. From the passageway drifts the sound of his father’s voice. His parents’ suites are enormous, consisting of many rooms—a bedchamber and a bathroom and a sitting room; drawing rooms and Father’s study… and each of those rooms is ten times as big as David’s. In Mother’s suite she keeps her own gramophone and radio, a matched set inlaid with mother-of-pearl. David knows what mother-of-pearl is because he has a toy box with mother-of-pearl on the top. When he asked Delia what it was and she told him, he thought she meant a person. He asked where she lived, Pearl’s mother who made boxes, and Delia laughed at him. Also in Mother’s suite are a grand piano and a small painted harpsichord, neither of which she plays. Atop a carved table sit three dozen glass eggs. He knows the name for them: hand coolers. He picks up a brightly colored one and indeed it helps soothe his sweaty palms. He goes barefoot into the passageway and follows the voices until he reaches the entrance to Father’s sitting room. He gets down on the ground and crawls forward, peeks out through the crack in the door. He cannot see Mother’s face, as it is obscured by a tall vase. All he can see of her is a motionless arm. Father is pacing the room and flinging his hands in every direction. David has never heard voices quite like these: angry whispering, whispers that would be shouts if they were only a bit louder.

Father is saying, “—forever.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Then what do you propose. Give me a better idea and I will do it.”

“You know what I think.”

“No.
No. Aside
from that. I told you already, I will never—
never
, never— consent to that, never. Can I possibly make myself clearer?”

“I have no other suggestions. I’m already at wit’s end.”

“And I’m not? Do you imagine that this is easier for me than it is for you?”

“Not at all. Frankly, I would think that it has been a great deal
more
difficult for you. You are vastly more sentimental.”

Father says a word David has never heard before.

“Louis. Please.”

“You aren’t helping me.”

“What would you like me to do?”

“
Help me
.” Father stops pacing and stares where Mother’s face should be. He looks like he’s on fire. He points up at the ceiling. “Don’t you feel
anything
.”

“Stop shouting.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t feel it too.”

“I will not have a conversation with you when you’re like this.”

“Answer me.”

“Not if you insist on sh—”

“Look, Bertha. Look up.
Look
. You can’t feel that? Tell me you cannot, I don’t believe that anyone has so little heart, not even you, to pretend as though you can walk around without being crushed by that weight.” Silence. “Answer me.” Silence. “You have no right to sit there and say nothing.” Silence. “Damn it, answer me.” Silence. “You do not behave like this. Not after everything I’ve given you. I’ve given you everything you’ve asked for, been exactly what you demanded—”

“Not everything, Louis. Not exactly.”

Silence of a different kind: infused with terror.

Father upends a table. Ceramic dishes and a wooden cigar box and crystal figurines sail across the room, producing a mighty crash. The glass tabletop shatters. Mother screams. In the passageway, David cringes, ready to bolt. From another place in the room comes a second, smaller shattering, and when the noise finally subsides, he hears weeping, two different rhythms in two different registers.

HE WORKS OUT THE CLUES. It takes a few days, because he has to wait until he goes to the Park with Delia in order to confirm his hunch. As they return from their walk, David counts windows and discovers that he has been wrong. The house does not have four stories. It has five.

How this could have escaped him until now, he does not know. The house is big, though, and he has often been scolded for wandering into forbidden territory. A whole wing remains off-limits, and David, generally lost in his own head, prone to long bouts of stationary dreaming, has never been one to overstep, not under threat of a whipping.

But to get to the bottom of this, he must break the rules.

The entrance to the rear wing lies through the kitchen, a place thick with steam and hazards. He has never ventured beyond the sink. Four days later, when he is supposed to be in his room, reviewing his German lesson, he sneaks downstairs. The cook is rolling dough. David straightens his backbone, puts on a bold face, and walks past him. The cook never looks up.

Through a swinging door he comes to a second room, where a pile of raw meat lies on a huge, scarred table. With its reek of fat and flesh, its spattered walls, its lakes of blood pooling round the table legs, the room exerts a queer, morbid pull, and David has to remind himself to keep moving, not to stop and examine the heavy, menacing instruments hung on the wall, the bloodstained grout…

He comes to a hallway checked black-and-white. He tries a number of doors before finding the one he wants: an alcove for the service elevator.

He gets in. Unlike the main elevator, this one has a button for a fifth floor.

As the car rises, it occurs to him to worry about who he might run into up there. If the girl is indeed there, what will he do? What if there are other people—a guard, say. Or a guard dog! His heart skips. Too late for worrying. The car bounces to a stop and the doors open.

Another hallway. Here the carpeting is loose and worn, pulling away from the walls. At the end of the hall are three doors, all closed.

The wind sings, and he looks up at a skylight. The sky is cloudy. It might rain.

He walks to the end of the hall and listens. Nothing.

He knocks softly on each of the doors. Nothing.

He tries one. It is a closet full of sheets and towels.

The next door swings open and the smell of camphor rolls over him. He stifles a cough and steps inside.