The Hundred-Year House Read Online Free PDF Page B

down.
    “Oh, dear God, no. The colony was such a burden to my father, he’d have shredded all that. The woman who ran the place, you know, turned out to be a Communist. And the drinking! It was always in the papers, someone driving into a fence. He was glad to be rid of the whole mess.”
    Zee would bawl him out when they got home. Not just for bothering her mother, but for grasping at straws. Zee so often had to defend, to people like Sid Cole, her own interest in historicity and context, that she ought to have been sympathetic to Doug’s search for something archival. But she saw no similarity.
    “So that’s when you moved here?” Miriam asked. “After it closed?”
    “More or less.”
    There had been profound resentment in the artistic community back in the fifties, when her father reclaimed the house and moved Gracie in here with her new husband, George, Zee’s father. When Doug was engaged to Zee, he had secretly ordered a history of the Devohr family through interlibrary loan. That was the only mention of Gracie at all—the strong implication that her father closed Laurelfield just to get the drinking, womanizing George Grant out of Canada.
    “So your job is to write the story of this guy’s life?” Case seemed to find this hilarious.
    “It’s really an analysis of the poems. How his life affected his work.”
    “Like a term paper,” Gracie offered.
    “Yes,” Doug said, after he drained his glass. “Like a really long high school English paper.”
    Zee, to his relief, smiled sympathetically from the other couch. She was stunning in her blue sundress, and her collarbones were a work of art.
    “Refills,” Bruce announced. “Would anyone care to climb Mount Gay with me?”
    Doug had been prepared for the line, was always prepared for it, but it was still a struggle not to lose it. And it was a struggle not to look at the flaming, shaking, red spot next to him that was Miriam’s face.
    —
    Doug stayed quiet through dinner. Sofia, the housekeeper, shuttled back and forth with plates of swordfish and asparagus, lemon sorbet, pineapple cake.
    Case was telling them all a story about sailing, something about his buddy getting lost in the Gulf, when he leaned the whole chair back and hit the sideboard behind him, sending a green china vase to the floor and into a million pieces. “I’ll—oh, God, I’ll—hey, I’ll pay for that,” Case said.
    “With what?” Gracie muttered.
    Miriam convinced Sofia to surrender the dustpan so she could sweep the shards herself.
    “He gets his coordination from me!” Bruce shouted. “That’s why they kicked him off the football team!”
    Case looked like he didn’t know what to do with his hands, or how to arrange his mouth.
    Doug searched for a way to change the subject, but Zee beat him to it. “You do realize that’s the ghost behind you,” she said to Miriam. “The painting, I mean.”
    Bruce gave the ancestor a look most men reserved for centerfolds. “She’s a beauty, isn’t she? A natural beauty. Nothing fake back then.”
    “Except the paint,” Zee said.
    Doug didn’t know much about art, but he could recognize that it was a great picture. If he ran into this woman on the street in modern dress, he’d recognize her instantly. Gorgeous, it was true, by any standards. Black hair and dark eyes, like Zee, balanced by the shoulders of a black gown. But somehow profoundly evasive. Some paintings seemed to follow you with their eyes, but this one had the opposite effect: No matter where you stood, Violet woudn’t meet your gaze. He couldn’t figure out why—he just knew he didn’t want to be alone in this room at night.
    “Do you mind my asking how she did it?” Miriam said. “How she died?” She was still down on the floor sweeping, a disembodied voice.
    “I always imagined hanging,” Gracie said. “But my family never spoke of it.”
    “Maybe that’s why I’m getting a vibe on the staircases! Maybe she did it from a railing.”
    Doug