When Venus Fell

I burst out laughing. She stared at me while I wiped my eyes. “I haven’t heard so much deliberate, down-home lawyer bullshit since I watched a whole afternoon of Matlock reruns.”

  Color rose in her cheeks. Her mouth formed a perfect, flat line. “I’d like to know why you arrived early the other day and went after Gib when he was alone and drunk.”

  I leveled an unwavering look at her. “You make it sound like a sinister plan. I wanted to check out the circumstances here before we met everyone. I’m not accustomed to strangers issuing innocent invitations and offering me large sums of money.”

  “Oh, I bet you’ve taken gifts from strange men a few times along the road.”

  “You’re obnoxious and catty, too. I’m impressed. Even Matlock isn’t that complex.”

  “I find it very interesting that you had no significant qualms about driving hundreds of miles to learn more about the Cameron family and property.”

  “I find you very interesting, too,” I said in the even, controlled voice I used when club managers wanted to negotiate a nooky clause in the contracts. “Why don’t you stop playing coy little variations on your theme and get straight to the big movement.”

  “Fine. I think you and your sister came here planning to hop on the Cameron gravy train. You think your old daddy’s hundred thousand bucks might be small pickings compared to the money you could wrangle out of my family. I’m here to say that if you or your sister pull any stunts I’ll be all over you like white on rice.”

  Cold fury. And amazement. Somehow, no matter how cynical I’d become, this woman’s gall got to me, probably because I had been suckered by the welcome the others had given us.

  Ruth went on talking. “If you have any intention of ingratiating yourself with my brother or our great-aunt in return for money or other favors, I highly recommend you drop the idea. And if you think you can cook up some bogus legal offenses worthy of some jackshit lawyer’s attention—if you think you can find some excuse to badger my family for more money—let me tell you why that dog won’t hunt.” She leaned toward me, her eyes glittering with disgust. “I’ll make sure the IRS lives and breathes to audit every tax return you send in for the rest of your life. I’ll make sure you can’t even spit on a street corner without a federal agent showing up to ask you why. You think you’ve been harassed for the past ten years? If you try to milk my family for charity I’ll make certain you and your sister can’t even apply for driver’s licenses without getting your asses raked over the coals.”

  “I have never,” I said slowly, “met anyone more paranoid than I am. Until now.”

  “You’d better take me seriously. I think we both agree the world’s not a gentle place to live. You either stomp or you get stomped.”

  “Now let me tell you something. You represent every power-happy, anal-retentive, prejudiced sadist who ever took advantage of people I love. I don’t want anything from you or your family. The charm of being one of the dispossessed people of the world, ol’ girl, is that being threatened loses its power after a while. I’ve got nothing to lose as long as I still have my family. You stay away from my sister, because if you give her the lecture you just gave me—if you accuse her of motives she can’t even fathom—I’ll tell the whole freakin’ world how Simon Cameron hid money for my father—and how the rest of you became his accomplices.”

  That was a terrible bluff. I couldn’t begin to imagine myself actually repaying Simon Cameron’s kindness—or Gib’s honest discharge of duty—with that brand of revenge. But neither could I give Ruth free rein to threaten me and Ella.

  Ruth stood. So did I. She was so mad she was trembling. “I’ll be watching you and your sister until the second you leave this place,” she said in a tone like a sharp hunting knife.

  “That won’t be long, I promise you.”

  She walked down the gazebo’s steps, stalked to her car, and drove up to the Hall.

  I let myself start shaking after I was alone. Staring after her, I said under my breath, “I know you. The first time I met you I was six years old and you were Nanny Robicheaux. I’ve been fighting you ever since.”

  • • •

  I was ready to sizzle. I made my way down a path that followed the river into the woods. The September day was still hot enough for me to appreciate the cold water.

  In a quiet spot where laurel shrubs shielded both sides of the river, I pulled off every stitch of clothes and sank down in a shallow pool. I must have sat there for an hour, watching minnows scoot around me. I examined my prune-skinned hands and wondered how long I’d have to soak before I shriveled to the size of a raisin. I splashed water on my breasts then stretched my arms overhead wearily. At that moment, in full, nipple-to-the-air extension, I heard the bushes rustle behind me.

  I forced myself to move as if I hadn’t noticed. I stood slowly, then slipped into my bra and panties as if I had all the time in the world to dress. I faked a yawn as I pulled on my white T-shirt, jeans, and sandals. Humming loudly, I slid my hands into my jeans’ back pockets. I closed the fingers of my right hand around my pepper spray.

  I pounced into the laurel shrubs, screeched some incoherent but ferocious attack cry, and squirted pepper into sixteen-year-old Jasper Cameron’s startled face.

  “Please, ma’am,” Jasper said miserably as I marched him up a forest path beyond the cottage, “just kill me before anybody finds out. I’d be happier that way.”

  “You should have thought of that before you decided to become a Peeping Tom.”

  We trudged along. Sweat beaded under my bath-damp hair. I’d told him I was taking him to his mother, and I wanted to hear him confess to her. I just wanted to make him sweat.

  It was working.

  His head up, his eyes watering badly, his jaw set and shoulders back, Jasper walked ahead of me with miserable dignity. “I’m not askin’ for mercy, ma’am,” he mumbled.

  “Good. Because you’re fresh out of luck, mister. I’ve got no sympathy. I’m having a lousy day.” I waved my pepper spray at him. Poor kid. I had only caught him a glancing squirt, but his eyes were streaming tears despite ten minutes of fervent rinsing. He stumbled along in a Braves jersey and huge, knee-length plaid shorts. He was too polite and clumsy to be anything worse than he appeared to be: a clean-cut teenage boy with a bad case of naked-female fever.

  “The right to privacy is as basic as the air we breathe,” I lectured grimly as we marched through the forest. “You could say I deserved to be looked at because I sat naked in the river, but I think I deserved to be respected. You make a habit of spying on guests who stay at the Hall?”

  “No, ma’am! I was raised to be a gentleman, ma’am.”

  “I’ve known a lot of so-called gentlemen who don’t have your conscience then.”

  “Ma’am, I figured you didn’t mind, uh, to be looked at, ma’am! Because you’re a musician and all. You get up on stages in front of people all the time.”

  I gave his arm a threatening prod with the nozzle of the pepper spray. “That’s right. I choose to let people look at me sometimes. But not offstage. There have been too many times when I had no say in what or how or who looked at me—or how they looked at my home, my personal business, my family. My privacy belongs to me. What you did isn’t a joke to me.”

  “Ma’am, I apologize again, ma’am,” he barked. “I didn’t mean to look, ma’am, I just happened to be nearby and the chance came up. Ma’am.”

  That’s not the only thing that came up, I expect. “You don’t have to call me ma’am, mister.”

  “Yes, I do, ma’am. Title of respect to ladies, ma’am.”

  As if I weren’t armed with a table condiment. “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen, ma’am,” he reminded me crisply.

  “Old enough to know better.”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  “I’m not a drill sergeant. Stop answering me that way.”

  “It’s a habit, ma’am! I’m joining the Marines after I graduate from high school!”

/>   “Why?”

  “Duty, ma’am! Service to my country! Family tradition of government duty!”

  “You can serve your country much better by going to college and peeping into the open windows of the girls’ dorms.”

  “I’m not a pervert, ma’am! I intend to make my daddy proud!”

  Here was the crux of Jasper Cameron, I thought. His life revolved around still-raw memories of a beloved father. “Your daddy wanted you to be a Marine?” I asked quietly. We strode up a hill out of the woods, between grassy meadows rimmed in white board fence. I was suddenly immersed in bright sunshine, the fresh blue scent of the sweetest air I’d ever smelled, and meadows of golden wildflowers stretching up the hills to puff-cake clouds above the horizon.

  “I decided on the Marines this year,” Jasper said hoarsely, still marching ahead of me, face-forward, his shoulders hunching with emotion. “My uncle Gib served in the Marine Corps before he joined the Secret Service, ma’am. My daddy was proud of Uncle Gib.”

  “I take it, then, that your daddy was never interested in being a Marine himself?”

  “No, ma’am. My daddy was a businessman and a preacher, ma’am.”

  “What kind of preacher?”

  “No particular church, ma’am. But he was elected county commissioner and stuff. He could marry people and stuff like that. And he could preach sermons. He didn’t have time to go to college. He studied religion on his own. He said he sort of made up his own rules as he went along. People trusted him. Asked him for advice.”

  “Then tell me why your daddy would be proud if you put on a soldier’s uniform and vowed to kill your fellow human beings if the government asked you to.”

  “I … ma’am, I don’t intend to shoot people unless I have to. You’re not a Communist, are you? I heard you might be.”

  I bristled. “Mister, I’d bet money you don’t know enough politics to tell me the difference between a Communist and a toad frog.”

  “Communists want the government to own everything.”

  “Well, I don’t believe in politics. I’m not a political joiner. I just want the government to stay out of my bathroom window. Why don’t you decide what you would be happy doing after high school, instead of what your daddy might want based on what you think he was proud of about your uncle Gib?”

  This convoluted question evidently escaped him. We topped the hill, and he halted, his shoulders slumping again. I looked across at the magnificent old mansion set atop the next hill, with the small, lovely river gleaming peacefully below it.

  “Please just kill me, ma’am,” he repeated. “I don’t want my mama to know what I did.”

  “Move it.” We walked onward. “Why don’t you get yourself a nice girlfriend, Marine?”

  “I don’t know how to talk to girls, ma’am. I always say the wrong thing. Or I don’t say anything at all.”

  “You’re talking to me.”

  “I’m scared of you in a different way, ma’am.”

  “Why, thank you.”

  “I was hoping you might help me out, ma’am.”

  “How so? By taking more baths?”

  “You’re in show business. You know about men. If I could just get some swank goin’—you know, kinda convince the girls at school that I’m a man—”

  “Letting the big dog hunt doesn’t make you a man. Any male animal can find a hen for his rooster. The tricky part is being smart enough to keep the other end in charge. That’s what makes you a man.”

  “Oh, geez, ma’am, you sound like Uncle Gib.”

  “Good.” I pointed to his head. “Use your brain. Be responsible. Think deep thoughts.”

  “I’m not sure I want to, ma’am. The things I’ve been thinking the past year nearly make me crazy.”

  “I see. About your father?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I was going to go help him and Uncle Gib and Mama at the sawmill, but then I didn’t because Daddy was sort of in a bad mood, and it wasn’t like him, so I made up an excuse and didn’t go.” He paused and took a deep breath. “If I’d gone I would’ve saved him. And Uncle Gib’s hand, too.”

  Sweet Mary. “Halt,” I said. We stopped. “Sit.” I pointed to a fallen tree. He sat down. I paced, my hands clenched behind my back. “When my father died I thought I could have done something different that would have saved his life. But you know what? We always think of what we might have done if circumstances had been different. That’s life.”

  “No disrespect, ma’am, but I would have … I would have made a difference at the sawmill. I just know I would have. I would’ve jumped right in ahead of Mama and hit the button to turn off the sawblade. I’m fast. I run track. I move a lot faster than my mama can move. But I was ill-tempered and didn’t go to the sawmill that day. I wasn’t responsible enough. I wasn’t a man.”

  “So you think having sex with me would make you a man?”

  He leaped up. “Ma’am, I’m not even going to look at you again, much less dare have sex with you!”

  “Well, calm down, because I wasn’t offering. I’m saying you can’t blame yourself for what happened to your father. And you don’t become a man by marching around like a military clone, or by proving you can maneuver your sex organ toward the nearest female.”

  His face was bright red and getting redder every second. “I won’t be caught off-guard again, ma’am. I run track, I lift weights, I practice the martial arts. I won’t be weak again, ma’am.”

  “Look, my grandmother was descended from a samurai family. I’ve read a lot about the samurai, because of that. And you know what? The toughest sonuvadog samurai warrior was also the gentlest artist, the best poet, the most sensitive musician. Because it was said that a man had to appreciate beauty in order to know what he was fighting to protect.”

  “That’s sort of what our sign says by the front doors of the Hall, ma’am!”

  “Well, families of good philosophical taste like the same mottoes. Or something.” I rubbed my forehead. “March on, Marine.”

  His expression fell. He plodded forward. When we reached the front lawn of the Hall we halted. Jasper looked as if he’d drop through a hole in the earth if he could.

  “You’re pardoned, Marine,” I announced. “Apology accepted.”

  He stared at me with his thick brown brows arched like caterpillars. “Ma’am?”

  “At ease. Behave yourself, and your trespassing today is our secret. Okay?”

  “Venus, ma’am, thank you. My aunt Ruth says you look like the kind of woman who hangs out in alleys and rolls college students. But she’s wrong.”

  “Scram, mister. You’re losing points.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said again with elaborate dignity. Then he bounded into the house through a side door.

  “Mozart never had these problems,” I muttered under my breath.

  A dinner party in our honor was planned for that night. I dreaded it. Being feted by Camerons felt suspiciously like being served up as the main dish at a barbecue.

  By the time Ella walked into our bedroom that evening I was pulling on a pair of white silk trousers. “I hope Carter isn’t right behind you,” I said. “Undressed women seem to be the primary entertainment around here.” I had the trousers half up my thighs, and had not yet donned the matching blouse. My breasts bulged over the top of a white bra. When Ella said nothing I went on. “Of course, I expect he’s seen more than a few women in their undies. And out of their undies. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s taken a peek at your undies already.”

  She busied herself at a suitcase, and jerked a brush from her cosmetic bag. She stroked her hair so hard, wisps of it fanned upward in static-electrified blond filaments. “He taught me how to drive his buffalo today.”

  “I just bet he did. How’d your hair get so tangled?”

  “Let’s change the subject.” She began pulling her jeans and blouse off and throwing them ferociously into a corner. I stopped pulling my trousers up, my fingers still wound in the waistband.


  “What’s that supposed to mean? Throwing clothes. What?”

  She sighed. “Nothing, Sis. I don’t want to talk about Carter right now. I need to change for the party. Did you talk to Min about tonight? Do you think she expects us to perform? She’s really forgetful—you can see it in her eyes, she’s in some other world half the time. Carter and I watched her endlessly rearrange some flowers in a vase—he says she’s spent most of the past year in bed or just sitting around her bedroom—”

  “Listen to me. I’ve had a helluva bad day. But even so, I’ve never let strangers take advantage of us. Don’t you trust me anymore?”

  “What in the world?” She gaped at me. “What provoked you to say something silly like that?”

  “Nothing. Never mind.”

  “You think you always know what’s best for me,” she said testily.

  “We’re getting out of here at the end of two weeks and we’re not coming back again. I’ve been on the phone. I’ve got serious leads on studio work in Nashville.” Before we left Chicago I’d sent out a dozen copies of our standard studio-audition tape, but I didn’t mention that. “I’ve been concentrating on our business. You haven’t. I only agreed to come here to collect our money and try out the Nashville job market.”

  “You hate studio work. You always say it’s boring.”

  “We could stand a little boredom and security! We’re not going to live off our inheritance. I’m going to invest it for the future.”

  “Because you don’t trust me to handle our money, you mean. Because I’m not dependable. You’ve never relaxed since my, my illness in Detroit—”

  “Please don’t start that. Don’t change the subject. I’m telling you not to fall in love with this place or this family or Carter, because it’s all just temporary. It’s a fantasy. We’ll collect our money and we’ll leave.”

  “What’s wrong with you? Why are you raising your voice at me? I haven’t done anything.”

  “Well, good, keep it that way. Don’t do anything.”

  “Fine.” Her mouth set, she threw a pale gray shift with a faux-pearl collar over one arm. “I thought I’d wear this dress tonight.”