Wild Things (9 page)

Compared with Eric s deep mahoganies and nubby tweeds, Sydney's home was cool with white carpets and vivid fabrics splashed brilliant reds, blues, and greens. Borders of Tiffany-style stained glass framed the windows, in keeping with the building's art deco exterior. The fireplace was framed with elegant marble fluting right out of the Roaring Twenties. What both homes had in common was simple elegance that didn't look nearly so expensive as it must be. The Van Allen family had a lot of money, old and new.

My impression of cool aloofness faded when I saw the sitting room. A third of the room was dominated by an old desk, computer workstation, and office gadgets, including a fax machine. The desk was worn and grooved with the scars of many years of work.

I fell in love with the rest of the room — a large fireplace threw an ocean of heat into the comfortable chairs and sofas in crushed velvets and soft weaves. Instead of the hard, clean jewel tones of the living room, everything in this inner sanctum was softer, warmer, and gentler. The pristine white carpet gave way to a dove gray Berber. A low lavender footstool appeared to be covered by a fluffy gray rug until I realized the rug was peering at me suspiciously. The cat closed its eyes once it had consigned me to the ranks of the uninteresting. I sank into an enormous chair in muted lavender and sea green, surrounded by soft pillows. I immediately wanted to put my head down and burrow deeper with an old, beloved book.

"Be careful of that chair," Sydney said. "It puts people to sleep."

I struggled upright. "I think it's bewitched," I said. "It made me want to read
Ivanhoe
and eat apples."

Sydney laughed.
"Little Women,
right?"

I grinned. "That's amazing."

"Sydney can identify almost any quote," Eric said, settling into a sofa corner. He stretched out his long legs.

Sydney's back was to us as she dropped ice cubes into glasses. "What would you like? I squeezed juice this morning."

"What kind of juice," Eric asked suspiciously.

"Strawberry-kiwi-lime with apple and grapes." Sydney laughed at the expression on Eric's face. "Okay, I cleaned out the fridge."

"I'll have juice," I said. "It sounds great."

"You're a wonderful guest," Sydney said, handing me a glass. "Actually, it's good. Here," she said to Eric. "You get sparkling water."

I sipped the juice. "I can feel the vitamins already."

"It has that effect on me, too." Sydney poured herself a glass and then settled gracefully in front of the fire on a large square pillow covered with petit point.

"I bet Faith could stump you," Eric said.

"Oh stop." Sydney pursed her lips at Eric and turned to me. "He's been trying to stump me on a quote for years. Other people do it all the time, but he's never managed," she said, with a wicked glance at him. Eric stuck his tongue out at her.

"You must have an incredible memory," I said. I wondered why I had ever thought her cold.

Her smile turned serious. "I think that alcohol reformatted my hard drive," she said, tapping her forehead. "I was unfit to practice even the most basic law for about two years and spent all my time read
ing. And reading. And reading. It was how I got back to reality."

"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination," I said.

Sydney opened her mouth, and I could almost see the cerebral computer disks spinning. After a few moments, she said, "John Lennon."

We smiled at each other, and I realized anew that her eyes were brown, but velvet where Eric's were crystal. She looked away, leaving me with an odd sensation in the pit of my stomach.

Both Eric and Sydney were too polite to talk about topics I knew nothing about, but it was unavoidable. A failing elderly aunt was news to Eric, and Sydney hadn't yet heard about the birth of a second cousin.

"Sorry, Faith," Eric said. "It must be boring."

I shook my head. "No, really. But I must confess that I can't keep your family tree straight in my head."

Sydney chuckled. "My grandmother, that's my father's mother, was married and widowed three times and had two children each marriage. My father was child number three and son number one. He has one brother, three half-sisters and a half-brother. All of them except my father have been married at least twice with kids from each marriage. I have trouble keeping it clear, and I've had years of practice. It makes our family holidays very, very large."

Eric snorted. "As we are all going to experience this year. Mom wants to do the big holiday. She put out the word to the aunts and uncles about four months ago, and it looks like with a few exceptions everyone is going to come. She's guessing about a hundred adults and sixty-five kids for dinner."

Wow, I said, before I could help myself. "I wouldn't want to be the one who brings the potato salad."

They both burst out laughing, Sydney falling back on the pillow. All at once I realized how lovely the rest of her was. Her features were too pronounced to be pretty, but striking in combination. Her cashmere sweater outlined a lean figure, and I glanced down at my hands, thinking that her breasts would fill them.

My heart stopped. For about five seconds I couldn't breathe. Sydney's laughter died and she wiped her eyes, then turned her head to look at me. I could breathe again. I wanted to breathe her in.

Her eyes widened. "We're not laughing at you," she said rising up onto one elbow. "You hit the nail on the head, that's all."

The firelight was dancing on her throat and mouth the way it had the night of Liz's party.

Eric nudged me gently. "Are you okay, sweetie?"

"I'm sorry," I managed to say. "I was floored by the idea of anyone being able to entertain that many people outside of a hotel in this day and age." I met women all the time. Until now only Renee had affected me this way. My pulse was hammering in my throat.

Eric smiled fondly. "That's our mom. She says once a decade you need to air out the grand ballroom to fight the mildew."

"She sounds like a practical woman," I said, feeling very far away. I've always liked looking at women. The way they are always busy, how they move their hands and walk. Their faces please my eyes. But only Renee had ever made my skin burn. Until now.

"She is," Sydney was saying. "The gardens are just a means of using up the manure from the stables. And so on." She looked at me a little oddly, and I summoned up a smile.

"There's nothing quite so astonishing as common sense," I said.

"Emerson," Sydney said. "Let's have dinner."

The food was so good that I managed to regain my composure. Sydney hadn't been idly boasting about her lasagna — the sauce was rich and smooth with olives and plum tomatoes. Garlic toast with goat cheese and freshly chopped chives accompanied it, followed by what Sydney called her great vice: chocolate mousse in chocolate bowls topped with chocolate sauce.

"This is rather chocolate overkill, don't you think? You could have done a raspberry sauce, you know," Eric said. One of the things I liked about him was that he enjoyed food. Sydney obviously did, too.

Sydney sniffed. "I don't understand the tendency to ruin perfectly good chocolate with fruit."

"I'm with you," I said, making a face at Eric. "There's no such thing as chocolate overkill. However, I have developed a taste for Godiva chocolate-covered orange peels. On special occasions, and then I have to go to confession."

Sydney's shudder turned into a smile. "Well,
ego te absolvo.
To each her own." She glanced at her brother. "What are you smiling about, Eric?"

"I was just thinking how glad I am you like each other. I thought you would, and I didn't want to be wrong."

I did like Sydney. I liked her very much. I'd be
much happier if I weren't fighting other, inappropriate feelings. I glanced at her, she smiled, and time stood still. It couldn't have, not really. The feeling was absurd.

Sydney abruptly looked away, saying, "Let's have coffee in front of the fire."

"I'll help you clear up," I offered.

"No need, the dishes just go in the sink. One of the joys of being the idle rich is Lucy, who stops in for a few hours every day to clean up, take my dry cleaning in, buy groceries, and be generally indispensable."

"Idle rich," Eric scoffed. "You're hardly idle, Syd. Neither am I."

I could tell that the idea of being thought "idle rich" bothered him. I admired him for working as hard as he did when he could have been a playboy. No doubt his family money had allowed him to buy his architectural firm, but it wasn't a hobby. He didn't dabble at architecture any more than Sydney dabbled at law.

Despite Sydney's protests, I helped carry our dishes into the kitchen while Sydney made cappuccino. I was already in love with the sitting room, and I lost my heart again to the old-fashioned but functional kitchen. It was larger than my entire apartment. The iron stove had claw feet, but the eight burners obviously worked. There were two Sub-Zero refrigerators and a deep freeze. There was a large oven big enough for a fifty-pound turkey and a smaller one for projects not quite so vast. Microwave and convection ovens were also built into the cabinetry. I asked her about the tile, which looked very
old and Italian, and she described the various restoration projects she'd undertaken since buying the condominium about six years earlier. Her desire to keep the interiors faithful to their original nineteen-twenty appearance hadn't stopped her from adding all the modern conveniences, but appliances like the dishwasher were hidden behind oak cabinets with aged porcelain insets.

We settled into our earlier chairs with fragrant cappuccinos.

"May I ask you both a question?"

Eric nodded at me and Sydney said, "Fire away."

"What's it like being from such a remarkable family? Not just wealthy, but. .. vivid. At Christmas a lot of fame and personality will be gathered under one roof."

Eric sat up a little, while Sydney turned her head to look into the fire. I saw her bite her lower lip.

"It is challenging," Eric said. "We're lucky in our parents. They like steadiness. They've been married for forty years and don't see how special they are. Mom's matter-of-fact about everything, and Dad thinks everything we do is fine by him." He shot a glance at Sydney. "Well, almost everything we do. I never worried about measuring up to the rest of the family. Mom and Dad are what matter."

"It was easier for you. I'm not sure why," Sydney said, looking across the room at her brother. "Maybe I felt it because my drummer really has a different beat. If I was going to go against the grain, I wanted to do it spectacularly. And that just got me into trouble with alcohol, and relationships. It took me a long time to see how I fit into our family, and
how..." She searched for words. "Knowing that I did fit brought me back to sanity."

"You weren't that far gone," Eric said.

"Don't bet on it," Sydney retorted. She turned to me. "Are you close to your brother?"

"Close. Hmm." I thought about all the things Michael didn't know about me, that I didn't know about him, and I still vividly remembered his intercession during my father's violent outburst. "We do care about each other and feel protective. I didn't know how much he meant to me until he had an accident. In the Navy. He was in an engine-room fire and had burns on thirty percent of his body, across the chest, arms and back. He suffered..." I broke off to clear my throat. "He was in a lot of pain. Still is. At first he took some sort of painkiller that kept him from dreaming, well at least that he could recall. I think I dreamed his dreams for him — I had nightmares about fire for almost a month after it happened. But are we close? We don't share a lot of the day to day, but the connection's there. It's certainly stronger than the one I feel with my sister."

Sydney was watching me intently, and I knew she hadn't missed the misting of tears in my eyes as I remembered Michael's painful struggle. I didn't usually talk about such things.

"Eric dragged me to an AA meeting. He may say now that I wasn't that far gone, but I was a person I don't ever want to be again. He sat next to me night after night while I fumed about him playing the big brother, and little by little the message of the meetings began to sink in. I have my reservations about some of the AA dogma, but there is magic
working at those meetings. He didn't stop coining with me until I got up, introduced myself, and admitted I was an alcoholic."

Eric shifted uncomfortably. "You'd have done the same for me."

"I'd never need to. And that's the difference between us."

"I know," he said. "I'm stuffy and boring."

"You're not," I protested. "Stuffy and boring people do not put Thai peanut sauce on their ice cream."

"Eeeww," Sydney said. "That's disgusting."

"It's good," Eric muttered, but he was smiling.

Sydney wrinkled her nose at him and turned to me. "My turn. I told you about fitting in my family. How do you fit in yours, Faith?"

"Well, I'm..." I paused with my mouth open and searched for words. A writer's trick is to picture a scene and then describe it. I pictured a Thanksgiving from my teens and saw us gathered: my mother's father the tailor; my mother the mainstay of the Altar Society; my brother the Naval officer; my sister the baby of the family; my father the assistant postmaster; his father the overwhelmed alcoholic Irishman who married one of the strong Walescu sisters, creating the Fitzgerald branch; his wife, my grandmother the beautiful and utterly cold matriarch; her brother the monsignor. But I couldn't see myself. I looked again — my mother the martyr, my brother the angry, my sister the flirt, my father the sanctimonious. Where did I fit?