Love Among the Walnuts Page 3

  These evenings were hard on Bart and Bernie, too. As disagreeable as Horatio's brothers were to start with, the happy atmosphere of Eclipse somehow made them even more odious. They simply could not stand to see people enjoying themselves.

  "It's unhealthy for you to bury yourselves out here in the country," they always said. "It's unnatural."

  "It's not good for Alexander," they said, "to be deprived of the company of other children. He doesn't act like a regular child."

  "Thank goodness," Horatio would reply.

  "What do you do out here all day long?" they asked. "You're neglecting your businesses."

  Horatio and Mousey and Bentley and Flossie and Sandy bit their tongues and gritted their teeth and refrained from arguing with Bart and Bernie. For one thing, they were too polite to argue with their dinner guests, and for another, they didn't want to lower themselves to Bart and Bernie's level.

  All of them, except Sandy, of course, knew about smog and traffic jams and computer billing, acid rain and MTV and microwave cooking, the IRS and alarm clocks and soy protein, and they didn't want any more. They were happy in their little Utopia, and they didn't care how much that bothered Bart and Bernie.

  The years rolled on, each one happier than the one before. Gradually they lost track of time. The batteries in their watches died and weren't replaced. They had no need for calendars. They had no newspaper. They forgot how old they were. What difference did it make?

  They never even thought of the future. Each day was perfection enough. Sandy grew taller and more handsome and became a young man, but that was the only chronometer they had. To Horatio, the lines in Mousey's face only made her more dear to him; and she thought the gray in his hair improved his looks.

  Bart and Bernie aged, too. The years turned them more churlish than ever because they saw themselves passing into old age without Horatio's fortune to squander. No matter how generous he was with them, they wanted it all.

  CHAPTER 6

  On the third Thursday in September, a crisp fall evening, Bart and Bernie arrived for their monthly dinner with a cake box tied up with string. "We've brought a birthday cake," they announced. "We've noticed that you never celebrate birthdays, and we thought it was time to have a celebration for all of you at once, for all the missed birthday parties."

  This was so uncharacteristic of Bart and Bernie that everyone was immediately suspicious. But as the evening wore on and Bart and Bernie remained cheery and pleasant, Horatio and Mousey, too out of practice to remain distrustful, relaxed and smiled with the thought that Bart and Bernie had finally learned to be nice.

  Something continued to bother Sandy, though, and he couldn't be at ease. He, who had no experience at all with deceit, deception, and ruthlessness, sensed something odd.

  In spite of much urging by Bart and Bernie, he stubbornly refused to have any of the cake. His parents were surprised and disappointed in him for his lack of good manners, but because he had never before behaved strangely without a reason, they trusted his decision.

  As usual, they were all relieved when Bart and Bernie, still in high good spirits, left. They sat before the fire with their coffee, once again relishing their solitude and the pleasure of one another's company. Flossie helped Mousey wind some skeins of yarn into balls, and Horatio and Bentley played a game of chess. Sandy sat quietly and stared into the flames, a puzzled look on his face. There was something ... something. He shook his head and then stared and puzzled some more.

  When Sandy awoke the next morning, it was with the sense that something was wrong. He recalled that he had gone to bed with the same feeling. He got up and went to the window, from which every morning he saw Flossie making her inspection tour of the kitchen garden. That morning the garden was empty except for Louie. Old but still remarkably spry, the cat was stalking his favorite chicken—the one they called Attila the Hen—through the scallions.

  Odd, thought Sandy. Maybe Flossie's sleeping late. Or maybe I'm up earlier than usual. He pulled on his robe and started downstairs.

  There was a deeper than usual quality of quiet in the house that morning, a quiet that filled Sandy with foreboding. He paused on the stairs to listen, but there was not a sound. Usually he could hear the clink of Horatio's coffee cup from the library, where his father liked to start the day by reading something from long ago. Usually he heard the sounds of Bentley and Flossie having breakfast together in the morning room. Usually he heard his mother's bathwater running or her piano or her tinkly laugh.

  That morning there was nothing. Sandy ran the rest of the way down the stairs and into the kitchen, which was empty, bright, and clean. Only the remains, of the birthday cake, still in its box, disturbed the orderliness. As he stood in the center of the big room, he heard footsteps. Feeling relieved and somewhat foolish, he turned to see Bentley coming through the swinging door to the kitchen. But when he saw the look on Bentley's face, he no longer felt so relieved.

  "Something's wrong with Flossie!" Bentley cried. "I can't wake her up. Where's Horatio? Where's Mousey?"

  "They're not up yet," Sandy said. "But I think we should wake them." He grabbed Bentley by the arm and they ran up the stairs to Horatio and Mousey's room. They knocked on the door, got no response, knocked harder, then shouted. But still there was no reply.

  Sandy opened the door, and he and Bentley rushed across the pale green carpet of the big, airy room, fragrant with the great bouquets of flowers Mousey loved, to the bedside. Horatio and Mousey lay side by side, breathing quietly, pink cheeked and bemused looking, despite their closed eyes.

  They would not wake up. Bentley and Sandy shook them and yelled into their ears. Bentley even slapped Horatio's face, the way he had seen it done in old movies, but nothing worked.

  "This is exactly how Flossie is," Bentley said, defeated. "She looks just like she's sleeping. She doesn't seem to be in pain and she doesn't look sick. She just won't wake up."

  "Let me see her," Sandy said.

  They made their way to the other wing of the house, where Flossie and Bentley had their quarters.

  Flossie was exactly as Bentley had described her, exactly as Horatio and Mousey were.

  "Do you think it's all right to move her?" Sandy asked Bentley. "Because I think we should put them all together. It'll be easier to watch over them. And we've got to call Dr. Malcolm."

  "Good idea," Bentley said. Gingerly he tried to lift Flossie, but she had become so plump from her own good cooking, he needed Sandy's help to carry her to Mousey and Horatio's room.

  They arranged Flossie on the chaise longue and covered her with a quilt. Then they tried again to waken the three sleepers but were again unsuccessful.

  Together they went to the kitchen, where Bentley started a pot of coffee while Sandy called the doctor. As they sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee and waiting for the doctor, they watched Attila strutting around the kitchen, pecking hopefully at the pattern on the linoleum, and clucking flirtatiously at Louie, whom she had followed in through the cat door.

  "Do you want any breakfast?" Bentley asked Sandy.

  "I couldn't eat a thing. Looks like Attila's the only one with an appetite." He took a saucer from the cupboard and crumbled some of the leftover birthday cake into it. He set it on the floor, where Louie sniffed it disdainfully and flopped down under the table. Attila happily ate it all, while Sandy put the rest of the cake down the disposal.

  "No need to save this," he said to Bentley. "Nothing to celebrate now."

  When Dr. Malcolm arrived, Bentley and Sandy took him upstairs to see the patients. After giving them a thorough examination and asking Bentley and Sandy a lot of questions, he scratched his head.

  "I'm mystified," he admitted. "I've been coming out here once a year for I-don't-know-how-many-years, giving you all your shots and your physicals, and I've never seen such a healthy bunch. I decided this unorthodox lifestyle must agree with you. A dose of it'd probably do me some good, too. Might help this little touch of neuralgia I have—"


  Bentley cleared his throat pointedly.

  "Oh, yes. Well, I can't find anything obviously wrong with them. They seem to be in light comas, but I can't figure out why. Might be some kind of virus you two are immune to. I'll have to put them in the hospital to do some tests."

  "Do they have to go to the hospital?" Sandy asked. "They haven't left here in years. They love it here. If they're going to get better, they'll do it here and not in the hospital. And if they aren't going to get better..." He swallowed hard. "Well, I know they'd rather be here in that case, too. We can get hospital beds and hire nurses or whatever it takes. Please."

  "Well, I suppose that's possible. It'll take a lot of arranging, though," Dr. Malcolm said reluctantly. "And I'll have to be running out here all the time."

  "We'll pay you double," Sandy said. "And Bentley and I will help. Please."

  Using the phone in Mousey's little office next to the bedroom, Dr. Malcolm made the arrangements for turning the spacious master bedroom into a sickroom.

  "The nurse should be here in a couple of hours," Dr. Malcolm said, walking down the front staircase. "And I'll be back later in the afternoon to start the tests. Just keep an eye on them." He went out to his car.

  "I think we should take some sandwiches and coffee upstairs. We can watch over them until the nurse comes," Bentley said. "I'm finally hungry."

  They went to the kitchen, where Bentley picked up Attila's empty saucer and put it in the dishwasher before he started to make chicken sandwiches (not from anyone Attila knew). Sandy packed the picnic basket with a thermos of coffee and some fruit.

  Louie came out from under the kitchen table where he and Attila had been snoozing together. He stretched thoroughly and went to sit patiently on Bentley's right foot until he was given a piece of chicken. Then he sauntered through the cat door to lie outside in the sun on the patio.

  "Hey!" Sandy called after him. "You forgot your girlfriend." He bent down to where Attila slept. "Come on, sleeping beauty," he said. "You can't stay in here without Louie." He shook her but nothing happened.

  "What is it?" Bentley asked, turning from his sandwiches.

  "It's Attila. Now I can't wake her up."

  Bentley dropped the bread knife and crouched under the kitchen table with Sandy. They shook her, but Attila, like Mousey, Horatio, and Flossie, would not wake.

  Sandy sat back on his heels. "What in the world is going on here?" He looked desperately around the kitchen, as if there was something dangerous in the very air of the house. Then he looked hard at the dishwasher and stood up. "Bentley, did you have any of that birthday cake last night?"

  "Of course not. I rarely eat sweets; you know that. And I certainly wouldn't eat anything those characters brought."

  Sandy smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. "That's it! The birthday cake. All four of them ate the cake. We didn't."

  Bentley stood up. "You mean you think Bart and Bernie tried to ... poison us all?"

  "Yes, I do. That's the only way this makes sense. They've been after Horatio's fortune for years, the lazy good-for-nothings. Remember how hard they tried to convince you and me to have a piece of cake last night? How they kept insisting it was the best cake ever made and it was a party and we were being spoilsports by not having any? If their plan had worked, it would have looked like an epidemic of food poisoning. Lord knows how long it would have been before anybody found us. And I just destroyed the evidence. How could I have been so stupid?"

  "You're not stupid," Bentley said, alarmed. "You figured out what Bart and Bernie are up to. They would have been Horatio's only heirs. And now, you're still in the way of what they want."

  "You're right," Sandy said, getting to his feet. "I've got to be very careful now. I wonder how long they'll be able to resist trying to find out how we all are."

  The phone rang. Bentley picked up the kitchen extension and said, "Eclipse. Bentley here."

  There was a long silence on the other end. Then a click and the hum of the dial tone.

  "Guess who," Sandy said.

  "What do we do now?" Bentley asked.

  "We're going to pretend everything's fine until we know how Flossie and Horatio and Mousey are. Come on. Let's get upstairs. We've got to take even better care of them now that we know what's going on."

  They made a nest of dish towels in a plastic dishpan, put Attila gently into it, and carried her upstairs to the sickroom. There they sat, eating sandwiches and watching their patients breathing serenely in and out.

  CHAPTER 7

  They jumped when the doorbell rang, announcing the simultaneous arrival of the nurse and the van carrying the hospital equipment.

  "Hi. I'm Sunnie Stone. I'm supposed to be the nurse," said the glorious creature standing on the doorstep. The sun made a nimbus of her silvery blond hair. "I mean, I am the nurse. I just finished my training last week and I can't get used to actually being one yet. I hope you don't mind. I haven't had a lot of experience, but Dr. Malcolm said there wasn't much to do for the patients, since they're just lying in bed like turnips ... I mean, oh dear, I'm not doing very well, am I?"

  "What?" Sandy asked, dazzled by her radiance.

  She peered at him. "I'm the nurse," she said slowly. "I've come to help with the patients."

  "Oh, yes, of course," Sandy said, realizing that he had missed out on something important through the years he had lived at Eclipse. "Please come in. Let me take your luggage." He grabbed the handle of the large brown suitcase but could barely lift it. He set it down again for a better grip. "What have you got in here?"

  "Books," she said. "I've worked all my life, from the time I was a little girl, and I never had time to read any books except in school. Now that I'm finally educated, I want to improve my mind. I know that sounds funny, but maybe you know what I mean. Dr. Malcolm said I'd probably have a lot of time on my hands here because the patients don't require too much in the way of actual nursing care, so I thought I could probably get some reading done." While she talked, Sandy dragged the suitcase into the hall to make room for Bentley to supervise the moving in of the hospital equipment. "It was a real challenge trying to decide what to read," Sunnie went on. "I got a list of the Harvard Classics from my librarian and I thought I would just start at the top and read all the way through them. But do you know what the first three books on the list are? The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, The Journal of John Woolman, and Fruits of Solitude. I didn't feel like reading any of those, so I asked the librarian for a suggestion and she told me War and Peace. I started it, and in the first chapter there were twenty-two characters' names! I was too confused to keep reading, so I decided to read by subject matter and learn all about one thing at a time. I started with whales. Don't ask me why. First, I read an article in the encyclopedia. It was pretty interesting, too. Did you know whales are cetaceans and they travel in pods? But when I came to the..."—she blushed prettily—"the sperm whales, I had to stop. Did you know there's a whale novel? It's called Moby Dick. I liked it but I sure know more about whaling than I hope I'll ever need to know. The encyclopedia made whales seem much nicer than Herman Melville does." She sighed. "Anyway, my suitcase is full of whale books, but I don't know ... Maybe I should have started with something a little more ... familiar. You know what I mean?"

  Sandy's eyes had taken on a glazed look as he listened to Sunnie. There was a silence before he said, "Oh, uh, yes. Yes, I know what you mean. I've read Moby Dick." He looked around and found the men from the hospital supply were just leaving. He realized guiltily that, for a few moments, he'd forgotten all about Horatio and Mousey and Flossie and Attila. "Let me show you the patients," he said, lugging the suitcase up the stairs. "We'll fix a bedroom for you in the office next to the sickroom."

  When Sandy dragged Sunnie's suitcase into Mousey's office, he found that Bentley had already moved a bed into it. The hospital-supply men had taken the regular bedroom furniture into another wing, and three hospital beds lined one wall. Attila's dishpan r
ested on an enamel table next to Mousey's bed, and cartons of medical supplies were piled in corners.

  Sunnie went to each patient's bedside and took temperatures, pulses, and blood pressures. "Everything looks normal," she said. "Except for the comas, of course. This is the first time I ever took a chicken's pulse, and I certainly don't, know what's a normal pulse for a chicken. But she's still breathing, and that's what counts in the long run. In the short run, too, if you really think about it." She turned her round blue eyes on Sandy. "Since everything seems under control here for the moment, I think I'll unpack. I didn't know how long I'd be here, so I brought a lot."

  "I noticed," Sandy said.

  Late in the afternoon Dr. Malcolm arrived and, with Sunnie's help, conducted every test he could think of on the patients. Each test eventually came back normal. And still, mysteriously, the sleepers slept.

  Sandy could be thankful only that Bart and Bernie had miscalculated the amount of whatever they'd put into the cake so that it hadn't been lethal. And he knew he'd never forgive himself for putting the rest of the cake down the disposal. Without it as evidence, no one would believe what he knew to be true.

  The days unfolded into a new routine of meals, patient care, and walks—for exercise and tension relief, rather than for pleasure—through the grounds of Eclipse. Sunnie was a perfect nurse, caring and tender, and she lived up to her name in disposition. The odd little household accommodated the altered style of their lives, but Sandy, and Bentley, too, missed more than they could say the old life of shared work and play and enlightenment.

  Knowing Sunnie was an unexpected adventure for Sandy. She represented the outside world for him, a world which, though he knew it existed, had seemed so distant and imaginary as to be irrelevant. Suddenly it was here, in his own home.