The War of the Roses

22

She had to polish all the silver herself. It was difficult work, particularly the rococo centerpiece, a copy of a de Lamerie. She was absolutely determined that nothing, nothing would go wrong.

She hoped, too, that he had gotten the message. She had heard the weird noises. It was not, the pusher had said, much of a dose. Just a short trip. Painting Benny was an afterthought. By now Oliver must realize that he couldn’t attack her with impunity. She was just as clever, just as resourceful. All he had to do was move out. Then it would be over.

And she was entitled to take the Little Red Riding Hood. She had never really admired the piece. And, if the truth were known, she wasn’t that fond of collecting Staffordshire. They were crude figures, had no intrinsic beauty, and the expressions on their faces were insipid. All because of Cribb and Molineaux. She was sick to death of the memory. Getting two thousand for the Litde Red Riding Hood was ridiculous. And the Cribb and Molineaux were now worth five thousand. She hoped he wouldn’t discover the missing figure for a while. At least until Thurmont had returned from vacation. But Oliver, too, was at a disadvantage with Goldstein away as well.

She was proud of her pluck and ingenuity. The name of the game was survival and she was determined to survive. She had debated with herself whether or not to pay the utility bills with the proceeds of the figure sale, but nothing could make her forgo the opportunity to show her wares to both her regular and potential customers. Also, they would get an opportunity to see her house. And she’d show them what style was all about. Then, perhaps, they wouldn’t dare be slow to pay their bills. A little enterprise, Barbara, she told herself as she went about the elaborate preparations for a dinner for fourteen. Thirteen, actually, since she had chosen not to have an escort, as if to assert her singleness.

She picked the menu and her guests carefully, determined to prove to them she could enhance the traditional, a challenge in itself. It was the beginning of summer and the ambassadors she wanted had not yet left for their summer vacations.

She even invited the Greek ambassador, accompanying the invitation with a little note urging both him and his wife to reassess her culinary skills. Their acceptance overjoyed her. The Thai ambassador, whom she regularly supplied with pate and who was considered something of a gourmet, also accepted, as well as the Fortu-natos, who were fast becoming two of Washington’s most prodigious hosts.

With a nod to public relations, she also invited a food editor of The Washington Post and his wife. His name was White and he had written a number of cookbooks, including one cataloguing famous recipes of former White House chefs. She could not come up with a Cabinet minister but settled instead for an undersecretary of the Army, whose wife she had met casually at parent meetings at Sidwell Friends. To round off the list, she invited the military attache of the French Embassy and his wife, an attractive young couple who were present at most parties given by the French Embassy.

The plan was, she knew, a bold stroke and she was determined to make a lasting impression, to start people talking. It would be the first of many, an advertisement of herself. With the children gone, she was less harried, although the tension between her and Oliver continued. She would just have to live with that, she decided, hoping that, once and for ail, she had foreclosed on any more harrassment from him. Soon, she was sure, he would come to his senses and move out of the house.

Naturally, she would do all the cooking herself. A vichyssoise to begin with, followed by crab imperial, beef Wellington with pate de foie gras, a delicate salad of watercress, mushrooms, and endives, and for dessert, custard-filled eclairs with a warm chocolate sauce. For wines, she picked a Chablis Grand Cru for starters, followed by a 1966 Saint-Emilion. And for a dessert champagne, a good brut.

For a moment she felt tempted to break into Oliver’s wine vault, but she resisted that. At all costs she must avoid any confrontations. Also, this was her show. Hers alone. She would prove to herself that she was capable of offering a complete dinner service. She checked her china, counted out her silver and crystal glasses. So what if she was being blatantly commercial? She was in business.

She made a long list of ingredients – crabmeat, fillet of beef, potatoes, capers, endives, mushrooms, eggs, chocolate. On and on. And she haunted the markets for perfect choices. Without the children to worry about, she was able to work at her own pace, largely ignoring Oliver’s comings and goings. He seemed to be keeping out of her way, and she was thankful. She put financial problems out of her mind as well. She found she enjoyed working on projects with specific goals. It gave her life more structure, more purpose. It was delicious to savor such freedom. To be sure she got a good night’s sleep, she took a strong sleeping pill. It made the nights go faster. Shut out all anxieties. She also devised a plan to thwart any malicious interference by Oliver, just in case the matter with Benny hadn’t taught him a final lesson.

On the day before the party, she moved a cot into the kitchen. Her idea was to prepare everything that day and to spend the night in the kitchen, working right up to the point when the three in help she had hired would arrive. Carefully, she inspected the food she had purchased for any signs of tampering. The wines as well. Satisfied, she began the job of preparation.

For some reason, the one arm tap in the stainless steel sink would not run cold. She tried the other sink and the same condition prevailed. It wasn’t a serious problem, but when she moved the tap arm to hot, it came out scalding and scorched her hand. She screamed in pain. It had never happened before, but after the initial shock, she countered the problem by emptying ice cubes into a large stock pot and used the resulting cold water for washing the various ingredients.

Only vaguely did she relate the mishap to Oliver. Even if it was sabotage, she was determined that nothing would stand in her way. When one of the mixing heads came loose from the mixing bowl on the kitchen island center and flew into the ceiling, narrowly missing her face, she received her first jolt of real concern. Her fingers shook as she picked up the head, looked at its thread, then reattached it. It could have been her fault. She might not have tightened it properly.

She fitted the Cuisinart with the slicer top and fed peeled potatoes into it, watching with satisfaction as the thinly sliced pieces piled into the transparent bowl. But when she turned the bowl cover to the off position, it did not stop the blade from whirring and she quickly flicked the machine to the off position. Still it continued to whir. She then reached to pull the plug from the socket but it would not come out.

As she contemplated the problem the room seemed to be growing hotter and she noted that all the burners on the electric stove were red hot. She turned the knobs, but her action had little effect. Still she resisted any sense of panic, determined to remain calm despite the continuous whirring of the Cuisinart. Finally, in a fit of pique, she tugged at the wire and the Cuisinart fell to the floor, which loosened the slicing blade and sent it careening like a projectile into the range hood, ricocheting off a cabinet before it lost power and clanked into one of the sinks.

To avoid being hit, she had fallen to the floor; as she rose the knife box toppled, spraying knives over her body, making cuts in her thighs. Running to the sink, she inadvertently pulled the arm of the faucet, scalding her hand. As it shot away from the fiery liquid her hand brushed the disposal switch, which set the machine moving deep in the bowels of the basin. She tried to shut it off, but it did not -step. As she reeled away from it the range-hood fan inexplicably turned on, as well as the two blenders along the shelf.

Reaching for the plugs, her hand brushed the toaster, which was hot. The red light went on in the coffee maker and on the microwave oven. The dishwasher began its first whirling cycle. Joining the maddening symphony, the disposal began to rasp, offering a grating, nasty metallic counterpoint.

The sweat of fear poured down her back. Every electrical appliance in the kitchen seemed to have turned on in sequence.

The cacophony of sound stabbed at her eardrums and the blood from her knife wounds began to soak through her slacks. Her scalded hand ached as she staggered madly around the kitchen bumping into pots, pans, colanders, salad bowls, scattering canned goods and food, breaking plates. Her head banged into the copper pots hanging overhead and when she felt herself falling from dizziness, she grabbed at them, bringing them down with her and bruising herself.

She lay in the wreckage screaming and helpless. Finding the strength to crawl along the kitchen floor on her belly, she grasped at the knob to the downstairs door, lifted herself, and staggered down the wooden stairs, slipping near the landing, banging her head. The noise from the kitchen followed her. She groped for and found the fuse box, opened the metal door, and pulled the master switch, plunging everything into darkness.

She lay on the cold floor of the basement, wondering if she had died. The house was uncommonly still, the air conditioning silenced. Every part of her seemed to ache and it was the pain finally that convinced her that she was still alive. In the darkness she could not tell if it was tears or blood that rolled down her cheeks. She could not even determine which was more pervasive, her pain or her anger.

Trying to stand, she fell back. Her knees gave, but she followed a beam of daylight from the partially opened door and dragged herself up the stairs. The kitchen was a shambles. Avoiding the wreckage, she staggered to the bathroom to survey the damage to her body. There were some bruises visible on the side of her head. A crisscross of cuts ran over her thighs. The blood had caked and there were welts and bruises on her arms. Her scalded hand smarted.

But the physical pain paled beside her anger. She had no illusions about what had occurred. The bastard had booby-trapped the kitchen. As she cleaned herself and suffered the stings of antiseptic on her cuts, she felt an irresistible urge for revenge. As she had suspected when she had locked him into the sauna, she knew she had the capacity to kill. Without guilt. Without remorse. Hadn’t he attempted to mortally injure her by tampering with her kitchen? By making it a weapon?

After her thirst for revenge came determination, a hardening of the will beyond anything she had ever experienced before. ‘You will never stop me,’ she told her image in the mirror.

She -cleaned up the kitchen as best she could and, using tools from his workshop, pried out the plugs and disconnected all the appliances he had tampered with, including the electric stove. One sink was still operating. She did not call an electrician. There was no time. Besides, surveying the situation, she decided that she could still prepare the dinner without using any of the appliances, although she had to go to the store and buy a hand-operated meat grinder and several slicing and grating gadgets.

‘Fuck technology,’ she whispered to the mute appliances, checking carefully to be sure that the gas stove and oven had not been tampered with. Miraculously, the gas stove had escaped. She would need that.

As she worked long into the night, she felt a grudging admiration for labor-saving devices that had been created for the benefit of the modern woman. The irony, she knew, was that these devices had been invented by men, making women obvious conspirators in their own destruction. Such thoughts kept her attitude positive and her resolve unweakened. She reveled in her independence, her creativity, her resourcefulness.

She slept in her clothes and with one hand on the handle of a cleaver, knowing that if he gave her the slightest opportunity she would use it on him. The surety of that knowledge brought odd comfort. She heard him come into the house, but he had not paused, bounding up the stairs to his room, in his wake the sound of Benny’s nails clicking on the marble foyer. To further fortify herself, over each entrance to the kitchen she had stretched a taut line, on which she hung pots and pans, set to make a loud clatter at the least provocation.

She lay on the cot, eyes open, listening for the slightest sound. Let him come. She was ready….

At dawn she was up again, putting the final touches on the foie gras, pounding the dough for the puff pastry in which she would wrap the beef fillet. By midmorning she had filled the clamshells with the makings of the crab imperial, readying it for the oven. The fillet was now being partially cooked in the oven, prior to its being coated with foie gras, wrapped in pastry, and decorated. The vichyssoise was already safely tucked away in the refrigerator.

She had kept her head. She was proud of that and when the three servants showed up – two white-gloved waiters and a maid – she felt the euphoria of victory. Nothing was impossible.

She sat at the head of the table like a presiding magistrate. She had carefully dressed in an old Galanos and had brought in a hairdresser to do her hair. Her guests, echoing her own thoughts, pronounced her beautiful and she felt high-spirited and witty, joking with the Greek ambassador on her right and the Thai ambassador on her left. She had high expectations that the after-dinner toasts would offer exaggerated compliments to her charm, her looks, and, most important, to her culinary ability. Mr. White, the Washington Post food editor, asked explicit questions about each dish and seemed gready impressed by the details she provided.

She sensed how impressed they were with the house, its possessions, the lovely silver and china displayed on the table. The beef Wellington was perfect, and she was certain that some supernatural force had intervened to assist her.

‘I cannot tell you all how happy I am,’ she told them as the waiters, skilled in the impeccable French service, served each guest a slice of beef Wellington. She could not remember ever being happier. This would be the first of many dinner parties, she decided. She would be more than a great caterer of Washington, she fantasized. She would be a great hostess. After all, she had the grand house, the charm and attractiveness, and would be, or was already, one of the great practitioners of the noble art of cookery. She would surpass Julia Child, become a great world culinary authority. International celebrities would vie with one another to be invited to her table, and her books would be published throughout the world.

‘I hadn’t realized,’ the Greek ambassador said as his fork slipped into the tender beef, ‘what an extraordinary woman you are.’ He looked at her with an expression of fawning admiration. For the first time in her life she felt a sense of power. This was her conception. Her party. It vindicated her willingness to go through the fires of hell to keep this house, this ambience.

Pleased, she looked around the table at her guests -the men in black tie, the women in expensive gowns -realizing how much this house made a statement in the pantheon of Washington. It was something she had always believed, sensed, but now she saw its real value and understood the true reason for her private war. In Washington, perhaps everywhere else, a person is known by the neighborhood he keeps, the size of his house and the possessions therein. For someone like herself struggling for personal fulfillment, it meant a head start.

The idea warmed her and she felt herself softening. Perhaps some compromise could be worked out with Oliver. Now that she felt more secure, there might be more room to relax her demands. If only he would give her space. His presence crowded her. His living in the house was a constant irritant.

The Greek ambassador continued to address her. She nodded. Her mind was drifting. If only she could make Oliver understand how important this house was to her. There was, she decided, ample room for compromise. Despite what was happening now, Oliver was a practical man, a reasonable man. Compassionate, too. Her decision had cut too deeply. Both of them had overreacted. Besides, hadn’t they once loved each other?…

Benny’s bark intruded. Hearing it prompted an instantaneous reflex, a shiver of dread, the sound was

Oliver’s clarion and, for a moment, she felt the odd panic.

Alert to her nerve ends, she listened for his impending step. The bark continued, then faded. Her eyes probed the room. All three in help were busy clearing the table in preparation for serving the dessert, working in tandem with swift, efficient, professional silence.

A sense of uneasiness gripped her and she excused herself and went into the kitchen. The eclairs were laid out on their tray, waiting to be served; the chocolate sauce was warming on a burner over low heat. To the eye, nothing seemed amiss.

‘What is it, Mrs. Rose?’ one of the waiters asked, starded by her presence.

‘Why did you all leave the kitchen?’ she murmured, knowing that the question was ambiguous. The waiter, a tall, distinguished-looking black man, looked confused.

‘Never mind,’ she said quickly, surveying the kitchen once again. Turning, she went back to the table. The sight of her guests reassured her and she sat down, watching the waiters pour the dessert champagne.

‘Everything is perfect,’ the wife of the Thai ambassador whispered, filling Barbara with pride, chasing her uncertainty.

A waiter served the eclairs, and another followed with the warm chocolate sauce. Mr. White of the Post made a round sign of approval with his fingers, which completely dispelled her anxiety and she dug into the dessert. The chocolate seemed thicker than she might have wished, but the custard filling was perfect.

A tinkling of silver on glass startled her. The Greek ambassador rose. Stripped of his title and government-provided home in Sheridan Circle, he would be a very unimposing man, but standing now, well nourished with what, she was convinced, were some of the finest and best-prepared victuals in the world, well watered with rare wines, dressed in black tie and wrapped in the patina of diplomatic finesse, he made the symbol of her elegant home tangible. What did it matter if he barely knew her? He was visibly impressed. His toast was a potpourri of accented platitudes and compliments and she loved them all. She had never heard them applied to herself.

‘A hostess of rare beauty, a gourmet of the first rank, a woman of elegant taste, impeccable.’ The words rumbled outward in soothing waves. It was delicious. Others rose and echoed the Greek ambassador.

When they were finished and she had responded with a few modest words she had memorized, she led them into the library for liqueurs and coffee.

‘Would you mind if we made an appointment for an interview, Mrs. Rose?’ White asked. ‘There’s something special apparentiy at work here.’ She flushed and nodded, offering a touch of the obligatory humility.

‘I cannot tell you how embarrassed I was over our former problem,’ the Greek ambassador’s wife said in labored English.

‘I had no idea,’ the wife of the undersecretary told her, kissing her on the cheek.

A waiter passed cigars, cutting each proffered end with a flourish. The men became engrossed in political conversation. The women talked of other matters. Barbara delighted in the buzz of conversation, the sure mark of a successful party.

Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw the sudden frown, a brief wrinkling of the brow of the French military attache. She saw him whisper something to the waiter, who responded quickly, pointing to the foyer, and the man hurried off.

At that moment the wife of the Greek ambassador rose and looked curiously at Barbara, who understood instantly.

‘On the first floor,’ Barbara said quickly. She watched the woman’s gowned figure recede, but the odd, unspoken note of pleading disturbed her.

When White left the room with what seemed like uncommon speed, she began to feel the familiar tug of anxiety. With acute clarity, she heard the quick knocking on the door of the occupied hall loo. Rising, she went to the foyer and was suddenly confronted by the pale, tense face of the food editor.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Please.’ It seemed the only word he could muster.

‘Upstairs. There’s one in the master bedroom.’

She looked after him as he raced up the stairs. As she turned, the Thai ambassador was moving toward her, a pained expression on his dark face. Reality was crowding in her consciousness.

‘No. There’s someone there,’ she cried. ‘On the third floor.’

She was diverted suddenly by a woman’s voice.

‘Jacques,’ the voice cried, knocking on the closed door of the hall loo. She heard a muffled avalanche of French invective. The word merde came to her loud and clear, triggering further revelation. Turning, she saw more of her guests come toward her. They seemed to meld into one another, their voices raised in a cacophony of discordant sounds.

‘I’m sorry,’ she cried. ‘You must understand… it wasn’t me.’

The house suddenly seemed to come alive. The sound of flushing toilets, doors opening and closing, hurried footsteps. She saw the front door open and people brush past her.

‘Forgive me,’ she cried, feeling suddenly a bubbling sensation in her innards.

‘My God,’ she screamed, running to the rear of the house, through the kitchen, past the startled waiters, stripped of their uniforms how, busy cleaning up.

‘What is it, Mrs. Rose?’ one of them called after her.

She had lost any conscious sense of direction, finding herself finally in the garden. As she squatted in a clump of azaleas near the wall of the garage, she heard an unmistakably familiar sound next to her. There he was, the Greek ambassador, his bare bottom shining in the glare of the full moon. Slowly, his face turned towards her, implacable, expressionless. It seemed disembodied, like a lighted jack-o’-lantern hanging in the air.

‘Madame,’ the face said, offering an inexplicable smile.

‘Help me,’ she cried, looking away, hoping she would turn to stone.

She hid behind the azaleas for a long time, inert, paralyzed with mortification, watching the house. Only when she was certain that everyone had left did she find the will to move. Standing, she felt the acid of anger fill her, inflating her with its corrosive power. If he was within reach, she was certain, she would have strangled him and enjoyed the process. As her eyes roved the deserted garden, a beam of moonlight lit up the shiny cover of his Ferrari, which she could see through the window of the garage.

As if guided by some powerful force outside herself, she entered the garage by the garden door. With slow deliberation, she removed the car’s covering, then lifted off the fiberglass top, which she carefully set on its side. He had shown her how to do it. When he had first bought the Ferrari, he had let her drive it, but she took no pleasure in the process. It was a man’s toy.

In a toolbox on the shelf she found a screwdriver and unscrewed the box that held the mechanism for opening and closing the garage door. It was a simply matter to adjust the fail-safe mechanism. Once, the door had nearly crushed Mercedes, who had scurried away just in time, and Oliver had explained to her what had gone wrong with the fail-safe device. It was an extra-heavy door. The irony pleased her now, clearing her mind, enabling her to focus single-mindedly on her task.

When she had completed it, she took the remote-control gadget from its hook and tested it by opening and closing the door. Releasing the Ferrari’s emergency brake, she put the gears in neutral and pushed the light car halfway through the open garage door. It moved easily. Only thirty-two hundred pounds, he had explained. Just forty-seven inches high.

She felt her lips form a smile as she pressed the down button, watching as the heavy door descended on the defenseless car. The sound of the crunching metal was satisfying, oddly musical, as she repeatedly raised and lowered the garage door like a giant hammer. When destruction seemed complete in one spot, she moved the car and began working on another. The steering column bent, the wheel broke off, the dashboard crumbled. Each stroke of the door gave her a special shiver of joy. She had never experienced such wild exhilaration, and she abandoned herself to the sheer excitement, her fingers working the remote-control gadget with relentless deliberation.

When the novelty of the pleasure subsided, she simply pushed the car back into the garage and, closing the door, replaced the remote-control gadget on its hook.

What she had done restored her courage and she felt able to go back into the house again. At least now, she thought, she could enjoy her rage in peace.