Sick Of Shadows

CHAPTER TWO

THE CHANDLER MANSION was a blunt-faced structure of Georgian brick, at least a century old, and looking rather like an architect’s rendering of a Hereford bull. It had served both as residence and business establishment for the original owners. While it did not predate the Civil War, it was considered a showpiece in the county, and when the Chandler Grove weekly newspaper published its Christmas issue it always asked Amanda for recipes to print as examples of the gentry’s holiday food. Amanda always complied, dutifully copying out a few cake recipes from back issues of Ladies Home Journal. She never tried them herself, but the paper seemed satisfied.

The house had been built by Amanda’s great-grand-father, Jasper Chandler, shortly after the Civil War. He had financed it with the profits of a lumber mill, which he had founded, and which was later sold by Jasper’s grandson William Chandler, who had decided to make a career of the sea. He kept the house, however, leaving his wife and three small daughters there while he sailed various oceans.

Years after the death of his vague but patient wife, William retired inland to his country home, which was now the residence of his middle daughter Amanda and her husband, Robert Chandler, a scholarly country doctor who was also her second cousin. William’s retirement from the navy had been physical, not mental, and his habit of wearing a uniform at all times and running the house like a destroyer quickly earned him the title of “Captain Grandfather” from Amanda’s three off-spring: Charles, Geoffrey, and Eileen. His daughter Margaret’s children, Bill and Elizabeth, also called him that, but Alban, the son of his oldest girl, Louisa, called him “The Governor”-the result, no doubt, of the prep school education Louisa had insisted on giving him.

Except for the addition of bathrooms and other modern conveniences, the house looked much the same as it had when it was built. Amanda’s obsession with antiques kept the furniture in the nineteenth-century mode; in fact, much of it was the original furniture. The grandfather clock by the staircase had been brought from England by sailing ship, and the Persian rugs, Benares brass, and Chinese figurines testified to Captain Grandfather’s career as a sailor.

Scattered about the house were geometric paintings in a very modern style, representative of Eileen’s efforts as a painter rather than a reflection of the inhabitants’ taste in art. The paintings might have been more prized by psychologists than by art critics. Indeed, more than one of the consultants in Eileen’s case had passed many silent minutes studying the indistinct purple forms that swam in gray backgrounds.

The paintings had all been done before Eileen was sent away to Cherry Hill for treatment. Since her return ten months earlier, she had not resumed her work-not until the painting she was presently working on, a wedding gift for Michael, which she would allow no one to see.

Various other touches of individual personality were visible in the house: a rat’s nest study, which was Dr. Robert Chandler’s domain; a chemistry lab in the attic, outfitted for Charles, on the condition that he not blow them all to kingdom come; and a studio for Eileen in the glassed-in porch.

The most formidable example of family eccentricity was not in the Chandler house at all-but it was visible from any of the front windows.

June 9

Dear Bill,

I’m here-by way of the Chandler Grove Bus Station, though I’m sure there’s a more direct route-through the looking-glass, perhaps. It’s worse than we thought.

Geoffrey picked me up at the bus station. I think he has been possessed by Noël Coward, but even that didn’t prepare me for what was to come.

There I was on the drive back to Long Meadow, making polite conversation and mentally casting the Marx Brothers in a movie version of this fiasco (Harpo would play Eileen), when we rounded the last bend and I saw what I hoped was a hallucination (I’ve been expecting them), but what turned out to be a monument to the rampant insanity in our family. There across the road from the Chandlers’ sedate Georgian brick mansion is the Disneyland castle, complete with little spires and turrets and a sentry box.

“An architectural right-to-life group!” flashed through my mind, immediately to be replaced by the real explanation: Alban.

I’m sure you haven’t succeeded in repressing the memory of Alban completely. He’s years older than we are, of course, so we rarely had anything to do with him; I always thought of him as the target for Aunt Louisa’s monomania: “Is Alban anemic? Is Alban adjusting well?” You remember. Well, he has inherited Uncle Walter’s business now-and fortunately the people who run it-so he is at large. He came across this castle when he went to Europe with Aunt Louisa, and has duplicated it in the pony meadow. Aunt Louisa is living in the castle, too. (Nobody is quite sure what to call it. Geoffrey calls it Albania.)

I haven’t seen either of them yet. As we swung into the driveway, I asked if Alban might be in the tower observing us (with crossbow?). “He’s not home,” said Geoffrey. “The flag isn’t flying.”

Other than that, everything is pretty much the same. The backyard stable now houses a Ferrari instead of a barrel-shaped pony, but the orchard and the lake and the mansion are all the same.

So is Aunt Amanda.

When we went in, she was sitting in the back parlor, surrounded by a pile of envelopes, murmuring, “Dessert fork, tray, towels…” She reduced me to servitude at once. “Elizabeth! I’m so glad you’re here. There is so much work to be done about the invitations and the gifts and what-all. And of course we can’t bother Eileen with all this. She’s painting.”

I am writing this letter in between addressing invitations. I haven’t seen anybody yet, so I can’t give a full account of the horrors. I want to slip this out with this afternoon’s batch of invitations. I’ll write you again soon, because I want to subject you to as much vicarious misery as possible. Tell Milo hello for me.

Chanderella,

Elizabeth

Charles Chandler sat curled up in the middle of his bed with an open chemistry book and an assortment of colored sticks and jackrocks, which he was carefully fitting together. He resembled his brother Geoffrey-as Geoffrey might have been drawn by El Greco: ascetic, emaciated, and rather scraggly. He was totally absorbed in his project, oblivious to the blare from the stereo.

Geoffrey appeared in the doorway.

“Elizabeth’s here,” he said to the figure in lotus position on the bed. “I would have brought her up, but Mother snared her with wedding work.”

Charles nodded, or perhaps undulated to the music; it was hard to tell.

“Anyway, you’ll see her at dinner,” Geoffrey continued. “We are having swine flesh, as you so colorfully put it, and Mildred seems to be fixing some sort of fodder for you.”

“Soybean casserole,” said Charles. “Much better for your body.”

“On the contrary, cows eat it constantly, and they only live to be twenty-three. On that scale, you may not last out the month.”

“Do you want to know what I’m making?” asked Charles, indicating the sticks and jackrocks.

“It looks like a reindeer,” snapped Geoffrey. “What I would like to know is why you are playing the 1812 Overture at 45 rpm.”

“It helps me to visualize covalent bonding,” Charles answered, screwing another white stick into a jackrock. “I am building a molecular structure.”

“Fine, as long as you don’t put it up across the street!” He scowled in the direction of the window. “Bill didn’t come, by the way.”

“No? That’s unfortunate. I would have liked to discuss my proton theory with him.”

“Why don’t you discuss it with Satisky?” asked Geoffrey. “You might bore him to death and put an end to this circus.”

“What circus? Oh, the wedding! Now there’s covalent bonding for you. Eileen gets the trust fund when she’s married, doesn’t she? Do you suppose Michael knows he’s marrying an heiress?”

“I doubt if he forgets it for a second,” said Geoffrey grimly.

“I’m sure it will work out,” murmured Charles, running his finger along the page of the chemistry book.

“Don’t be too sure,” said Geoffrey softly.

Michael Satisky had sought temporary refuge in the downstairs library, where he sat in blessed solitude in a leather armchair, with a copy of Sonnets from the Portuguese hidden behind Appraising Antiques. The hearth rug, he decided, was definitely a Bohkara, but the mantlepiece vases might be reproductions. He hadn’t risked lifting one to see if there were any inscriptions on the bottom.

Eileen was down by the lake painting, and fortunately she refused to let him come with her, or to see the painting. It was probably to be a wedding gift to himself, he reflected, wondering if there were any tactful way to express a fondness for German handicrafts: Leicas, Mercedes, Porsches… Probably not, he decided, turning a page of Browning. He had promised Eileen an Italian sonnet as a wedding gift, but composing one wasn’t as easy as he had expected. He wished he could settle for free verse, since that was his usual style, and he could produce a specimen in a matter of minutes, but somehow he felt that the formality of the occasion required more structured poetry. He wondered if she were thoroughly familiar with Browning… Well, maybe a line-to start himself off…

What was that bit about “a creature loved by you might forget to weep”? How close to true that was, he mused. The frail, waiflike Eileen had almost vanished in a flurry of bridal veils and documents.

He had seen her for the first time at a Milton seminar on campus. She was a small, drab creature who sat alone and listened to the discussion with an expression that suggested she hadn’t heard a word of it. So he had befriended her, and offered to slay dragons for her-only to learn that she had enough money to buy a battalion of dragon-slaying mercenaries if she chose.

After a semester of free campus movies and long walks around the duck pond and the arboretum, Eileen had shyly suggested that he come home with her. He had pictured a widowed mother and a mortgaged farm; and now-this! Windsor Castle with ten bathrooms, and a family consisting of Clytemnestra, Walter Mitty, Victor Frankenstein, and Oscar Wilde. He shuddered at his own analogy. He was even beginning to sound like them.

He told himself that he couldn’t call off the wedding, because the shock might be too great for her reason, but he caught himself visualizing a honeymoon in Nassau, studies at Oxford, not having to work to support his writing habit… Eileen’s money.

“If thou must love me, let it be for naught except love’s sake only,” he wrote carefully.

Eileen Chandler frowned thoughtfully at the paint-splattered canvas in front of her. The shadowy part of the lake needed more gray, and the trees looked wrong somehow.

Perhaps she should have tried painting Alban’s castle, since he had been so insistent that she do its “portrait.” “Don’t forget the mice and pumpkins!” Geoffrey had quipped, so she decided to do the lake instead. After all, this was going to be a wedding gift for Michael. She hoped he liked landscapes; perhaps she should put a sailboat there in the middle of the lake.

No, better not. She was sure to get something wrong, like a rope out of place, and then Captain Grandfather would go on forever. Once she had painted him a picture of the Titanic, using a book illustration for accuracy, and even then something went wrong. He kept insisting that smoke couldn’t come out of all four smokestacks, because one of them was a fake, and even when she had showed him the book, he had waved it away.

Michael wouldn’t be so critical, of course. He almost never made her head hurt. She felt very safe with him, and very protected, as though she could finally be “real,” somehow. It wasn’t that her family didn’t understand her. That was just it-they did. Once when she had gone trembling to Charles to tell him she saw demons’ faces in her window, he had wanted to know if any of them had purple eyes, because if so, he’d seen it once while he was tripping on yellow sunshine. It was all right if you saw demons when you were stoned, but she saw them anyway. Finally the family had realized how trapped she was and let her go away to get better.

But they didn’t seem to mind, really, whether she improved or not. In fact, they hardly noticed any change. Michael would mind, though. He wouldn’t want her to hear voices or hurt herself. For him, she must be the fairy-tale princess and live happily ever after.

Suddenly her eye caught a detail of the lake that she hadn’t noticed before. With a brief smile, she dipped her brush into a smear of paint and began to shape it into the painting.

While she worked, a corner of her mind wondered if it were really there.