“The groom,” said Elizabeth.
“Oh.”
“Well? Don’t you like him?”
Geoffrey was quiet for a few moments. To keep from staring at him, Elizabeth turned to look out her window at the sweep of pine forest and pasture. Wild mustard flashed yellow against the red clay ditches, and dark wooded hills framed the sky.
Finally Geoffrey broke the silence. “What do you want to know? Whether he’ll fit in? Doubtful. He doesn’t have our particular brand of insanity.”
“Could you manage a description?” prompted Elizabeth.
“He is the sort of liberal who affects an Afro. He has a New Jersey accent, and he is a graduate student in English literature-specializing in quotation without analyzation, I think.”
“That sounds just like you,” Elizabeth said. “You don’t dislike him because of Eileen. You dislike him for some obscure literary reason. But does he really care about her?”
“It’s hard to tell. Everybody that Eileen ever brought home proposed-we always assumed it was the house. We’d find them wandering down corridors counting the bathrooms.”
“I guess you’re not looking forward to the ceremony.”
“ ‘Such weddings may more properly be said to be executed than celebrated,’ ” Geoffrey intoned.
“Is that from your play?”
“Yes. I revel in Ferdinand. He is most apt at times.”
The car rounded the last bend in the road.
“Oh, well,” sighed Elizabeth, “I’m sure everything will-Good Lord! What is
“I knew I should have warned you,” said Geoffrey sadly.
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
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 Noel 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.
