The Corn Maiden: And Other Nightmares Page 18

  Two attractive young women were emerging from the front entrance of the inn as Alastor approached. Their expressions when they saw him—alert, enlivened—the swift exchange of smiles, as if in a secret code—cut Lyle to the quick. Don’t you know that man is evil? How can you be so easily deceived by looks? Lyle opened his car door, jumped from the car, stood breathless and staring at the young women as they continued on the walk in his direction; they were laughing together, one of them glanced over her shoulder after Alastor (who was glancing over his shoulder at her, as he pushed into the hotel’s revolving door) but their smiles faded when they saw Lyle. He wanted to stammer—what? Words of warning, or apology? Apology for his own odd behavior? But without slowing their stride the women were past, their glances sliding over Lyle; taking him in, assessing him, and sliding over him. They seemed not to register that Alastor, who’d so caught their eye, and Lyle were twins; they seemed not to have seen Lyle at all.

  Recalling how years ago in circumstances long since forgotten he’d had the opportunity to observe his brother flirting with a cocktail waitress, a heavily made-up woman in her late thirties, still a glamorous woman yet no longer young, and Alastor had drawn her out, asking her name, teasing her, shamelessly flattering her, making her blush with pleasure; then drawing back with a look of off ended surprise when the waitress asked him his name, saying, “Excuse me? I don’t believe that’s any of your business, miss.” The hurt, baffled look on the woman’s face! Lyle saw how, for a beat, she continued to smile, if only with her mouth; wanting to believe that this was part of Alastor’s sophisticated banter. Alastor said, witheringly, “You don’t seem to take your job seriously. I think I must have a conversation with the manager.” Alastor was on his feet, incensed; the waitress immediately apologized, “Oh, no, sir, please—I’m so sorry—I misunderstood—” Like an actor secure in his role since he has played it numberless times, Alastor walked away without a backward glance. It was left to Lyle (afterward, Lyle would realize how deliberately it had been left to him) to pay for his brother’s drinks, and to apologize to the stunned waitress, who was still staring after Alastor. “My brother is only joking, he has a cruel sense of humor. Don’t be upset, please!” But the woman seemed scarcely to hear Lyle, her eyes swimming with tears; nor did she do more than glance at him. There she stood, clutching her hands at her breasts as if she’d been stabbed, staring after Alastor, waiting for him to return.

  It would be cream of Amanita phalloides soup that Lyle served to his brother Alastor when, at last, Alastor found time to come to lunch.

  An unpracticed cook, Lyle spent much of the morning preparing the elaborate meal. The soft, rather slimy, strangely cool pale-gray-pulpy fungi chopped with onions and moderately ground in a blender. Cooked slowly in a double boiler in chicken stock, seasoned with salt and pepper and grated nutmeg; just before Alastor was scheduled to arrive, laced with heavy cream and two egg yolks slightly beaten, and the heat on the stove turned down. How delicious the soup smelled! Lyle’s mouth watered, even as a vein pounded dangerously in his forehead. When Alastor arrived in a taxi, a half hour late, swaggering into Lyle’s house without knocking, he drew a deep startled breath, savoring the rich cooking aroma, and rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Lyle, wonderful! I didn’t know you were a serious cook. I’m famished.”

  Nervously Lyle said, “But you’ll have a drink first, Alastor? And—relax?”

  Of course Alastor would have a drink. Or two. Already he’d discovered, chilling in Lyle’s refrigerator, the two bottles of good Italian chardonnay Lyle had purchased for this occasion. “May I help myself? You’re busy.”

  Lyle had found the recipe for cream of mushroom soup in a battered Fanny Farmer cookbook in a secondhand bookshop in town. In the same shop he’d found an amateur’s guide to fungi, edible and inedible, with pages of illustrations. Shabby mane, chanterelles, beefsteak mushrooms—these were famously edible. But there amid the inedible, the sinister look-alike toadstools, was Amanita phalloides. The death-cup. A white-spored fungi, as the caption explained, with the volva separate from the cap. Highly poisonous. And strangely beautiful, like a vision from the deepest recesses of one’s dreams brought suddenly into the light.

  The “phallic” nature of the fungi was painfully self-evident. How ironic, Lyle thought, and appropriate. For a man like Alastor who sexually misused women.

  It had taken Lyle several days of frantic searching in the woods back beyond his house before he located what appeared to be Amanita phalloides. He’d drawn in his breath at the sight—a malevolent little crop of toadstools luminous in the mist, amid the snaky gnarled roots of a gigantic beech tree. Almost, as Lyle quickly gathered them with his gloved hands, dropping them into a bag, the fungi exuded an air of sentient life. Lyle imagined he could hear faint cries of anguish at he plucked at them, in haste; he had an unreasonable fear of someone discovering him. But those aren’t edible mushrooms, those are death-cups, why are you gathering those?

  Alastor was seated at the plain wooden table in Lyle’s spartan dining room. Lyle brought his soup bowl in from the kitchen and set it, steaming, before him. At once Alastor picked up his soup spoon and began noisily to eat. He said he hadn’t eaten yet that day; he’d had an arduous night—“well into the morning.” He laughed, mysteriously. He sighed. “Brother, this is good. I think I can discern—chanterelles? My favorites.”

  Lyle served crusty French bread, butter, a chunk of goat’s cheese, and set a second bottle of chardonnay close by Alastor’s place. He watched, mesmerized, as Alastor lifted spoonfuls of soup to his mouth and sipped and swallowed hungrily, making sounds of satisfaction. How flattered Lyle felt, who could not recall ever having been praised by his twin brother before in his life. Lyle sat tentatively at his place, fumbling with icy fingers to pick up his soup spoon. He’d prepared for himself soup that closely resembled Alastor’s but was in fact Campbell’s cream of mushroom slightly altered. This had never been a favorite of Lyle’s and he ate it now slowly, his eyes on his brother; he would have wished to match Alastor spoon for spoon, but Alastor as always ate too swiftly. The tiny, near-invisible capillaries in his cheeks glowed like incandescent wires; his steely-blue eyes shone with pleasure. A man who enjoys life, where’s the harm in that?

  Within minutes Alastor finished his large deep bowl of steaming hot creamy soup, licking his lips. Lyle promptly served him another. “You have more talent, brother, than you know,” Alastor said with a wink. “We might open a restaurant together: I, the keeper of the books; you, the master of the kitchen.” Lyle almost spilled a spoonful of soup as he lifted it tremulously to his lips. He was waiting for Amanita phalloides to take effect. He’d had the idea that the poison was nearly instantaneous, like cyanide. Evidently not. Or had—the possibility filled him with horror—boiling the chopped-up toadstool diluted its toxin? He was eating sloppily, continually wiping at his chin with a napkin. Fortunately Alastor didn’t notice. Alastor was absorbed in recounting, as he sipped soup, swallowed large mouthfuls of bread, butter and cheese, and the tart white wine, a lengthy lewd tale of the woman, or women, with whom he’d spent his arduous night at the Black River Inn. He’d considered calling Lyle to insist that Lyle come join him—“As you’d done that other time, eh? To celebrate our twenty-first birthday?” Lyle blinked at him as if not comprehending his words, let alone his meaning. Alastor went on to speak of women generally. “They’ll devour you alive if you allow it. They’re vampires.” Lyle said, fumblingly, “Yes, Alastor, I suppose so. If you say so.” “Like Mother, who sucked life out of poor Father. To give birth to us—imagine!” Alastor shook his head, laughing. Lyle nodded gravely, numbly; yes, he would try to imagine. Alastor said, with an air almost of bitterness, though he was eating and drinking with as much appetite as before, “Yes, brother, a man has to be vigilant. Has to make the first strike.” He brooded, as if recalling more than one sorry episode. Lyle had a sudden unexpected sense of his brother with a history of true feeling, regret.
Remorse? It was mildly astonishing, like seeing a figure on a playing card stir into life.

  Lyle said, “But what of—Susan?”

  “Susan?—who?” The steely-blue eyes, lightly threaded with red, were fixed innocently upon Lyle.

  “Our cousin Susan.”

  “Her? But I thought—” Alastor broke off in midsentence. His words simply ended. He was busying himself swiping at the inside of his soup bowl with a piece of crusty bread. A tinge of apparent pain made his jowls quiver and he pressed the heel of a hand against his midriff . A gas pain, perhaps.

  Lyle said ironically, “Did you think Susan was dead, Alastor? Is that how you remember her?”

  “I don’t in fact remember her at all.” Alastor spoke blithely, indifferently. A mottled flush had risen from his throat into his cheeks. “The girl was your friend, brother. Not mine.”

  “No. Susan was never my friend again,” Lyle said bitterly. “She never spoke to me, or answered any call or letter of mine, again. After . . . what happened.”

  Alastor snorted in derision. “Typical!”

  “‘Typical’—?”

  “Female fickleness. It’s congenital.”

  “Our cousin Susan was not a fickle woman. You must know that, Alastor, damn you!”

  “Why damn me? What have I to do with it? I was a boy then, hardly more than a boy, and you—so were you.” Alastor spoke with his usual rapid ease, smiling, gesturing, as if what he said made perfect sense; he was accustomed to the company of uncritical admirers. Yet he’d begun to breathe audibly; perspiration had broken out on his unlined forehead in an oily glisten. His artfully dyed and crimped hair that looked so striking in other settings looked here, to Lyle’s eye, like a wig set upon a mannequin’s head. And there was an undertone of impatience, even anger, in Alastor’s speech. “Look, she did get married and move away—didn’t she? She did—I mean didn’t—have a baby?”

  Lyle stared at Alastor for a long somber moment.

  “So far as I know, she did not. Have a baby.”

  “Well, then!” Alastor made an airy gesture of dismissal, and dabbed at his forehead with a napkin.

  Seeing that Alastor’s soup bowl was again empty, Lyle rose silently and carried it back into the kitchen and a third time ladled soup into it, nearly to the brim: this was the end of the cream of Amanita phalloides soup. Surely, now, within the next few minutes, the powerful poison would begin to act! When Lyle returned to the dining room with the bowl, he saw Alastor draining his second or third glass of the tart white wine and replenishing it without waiting for his host’s invitation. His expression had turned mean, grim; as soon as Lyle reappeared, however, Alastor smiled up at him, and winked. “Thanks, brother!” Yet there was an air of absolute complacency in Alastor as in one accustomed to being served by others.

  Incredibly, considering all he’d already eaten, Alastor again picked up his spoon and enthusiastically ate.

  So the luncheon, planned so obsessively by Lyle, passed in a blur, a confused dream. Lyle stared at his handsome ruddy-faced twin who spoke with patronizing affection of their aunt Alida—“A befuddled old woman who clearly needs guidance”; and of the King Foundation—“An anachronism that needs total restructuring, top to bottom”; and of the thirty acres of prime real estate—“The strategy must be to pit developers against one another, I’ve tried to explain”; and of the vagaries of the international art market—“All that’s required for a thousand percent profits is a strong capital base to withstand dips in the economy.” Lyle could scarcely hear for the roaring in his ears. What had gone wrong? He had mistaken an ordinary, harmless, edible mushroom for Amanita phalloides the death-cup? He’d been so eager and agitated out there in the woods, he hadn’t been absolutely certain of the identification.

  Numbed, in a trance, Lyle drove Alastor back to the Black River Inn. It was a brilliant summer day. A sky of blank blue, the scales of the dark river glittering. Alastor invited Lyle to visit him at the Inn sometime soon, they could go swimming in the pool—“You meet extremely interesting people, sometimes, in such places.” Lyle asked Alastor how long he intended to stay there and Alastor smiled enigmatically and said, “As long as required, brother. You know me!”

  At the Inn, Alastor shook Lyle’s hand vigorously, and, on an impulse, or with the pretense of acting on impulse, leaned over to kiss his cheek! Lyle was startled as if he’d been slapped.

  Driving away he felt mortified, yet in a way relieved. It hasn’t happened yet. I am not a fratricide, yet.

  Gardner King’s will was read. It was a massive document enumerating over one hundred beneficiaries, individuals and organizations. Lyle, who hadn’t wished to be present at the reading, heard of the bequest made to him from his brother Alastor, who had apparently escorted Aunt Alida to the attorney’s office. Lyle was to receive several thousand dollars, plus a number of his uncle’s rare first-edition books. With forced ebullience Alastor said, “Congratulations, brother! You must have played your cards right, for once.” Lyle wiped at his eyes; he’d genuinely loved their uncle Gardner, and was touched to be remembered by him in his will; even as he’d expected to be remembered, to about that degree. Yes and there’s greater pleasure in the news, if Alastor has received nothing. At the other end of the line Alastor waited, breathing into the receiver. Waiting for—what? For Lyle to ask him how he’d fared? For Lyle to offer to share the bequest with him? Alastor was saying dryly, “Uncle Gardner left me just a legal form, ‘forgiving’ me my debts.” He went on to complain that he hadn’t even remembered he owed their uncle money; you would think, wouldn’t you, with his staff of financial advisors, Gardner King could have reminded him; it should have been his responsibility, to remind him; Alastor swore he’d never been reminded—not once in six years. Vividly Lyle could imagine his brother’s blue-glaring eyes, his coarse, flushed face and the clenched self-righteous set of his jaws. Alastor said, hurt, “I suppose I should be grateful for being ‘forgiven,’ Lyle, eh? It’s so wonderfully Christian.” Lyle said coolly, “Yes. It is Christian. I would be grateful, in your place.”

  “In my place, brother, how would you know what you would be? You’re ‘Lyle’ not ‘Alastor.’ Don’t give yourself airs.”

  Rudely, Alastor hung up. Lyle winced, as if his brother had poked him in the chest as so frequently he’d done when they were growing up together, as a kind of exclamation mark to a belligerent statement of his.

  Only afterward did Lyle realize, with a sick stab of resentment, that, in erasing Alastor’s debt to him, which was surely beyond $10,000, their uncle had in fact given Alastor the money; and it was roughly the equivalent of the amount he’d left Lyle in his will. As if, in his uncle’s mind, Alastor and he were of equal merit after all.

  She came to him when he summoned her. Knocking stealthily at his door in the still, private hour beyond midnight. And hearing him murmur Come in! and inside in the shadows he stood watching. How she trembled, how excited and flattered she was. Her girlish face, her rather too large hands and feet, a braid of golden-red hair wrapped around her head. In her uniform that fitted her young shapely body so becomingly. In a patch of caressing moonlight. Noiselessly he came behind her to secure the door, lock and double-lock it. He made her shiver kissing her hand, and the soft flesh at the inside of her elbow. So she laughed, startled. He was European, she’d been led to believe. A European gentleman. Accepting the first drink from him, a toast to mutual happiness. Accepting the second drink, her head giddy. How flattered by his praise Beautiful girl! Lovely girl! And: Remove your clothes please. Fumbling with the tiny buttons of the violet rayon uniform. Wide lace collar, lace cuff s. He kissed her throat, a vein in her throat. Kissed the warm cleft between her breasts. Lee Ann is it? Lynette? In their loveplay on the king-size bed he twisted her wrist just slightly. Just enough for her to laugh, startled; to register discomfort; yet not so emphatically she would realize he meant anything by it. Here, Lynette. Give me a real kiss. Boldly pressing her fleshy mouth against his an
d her heavy breasts against his chest and he bit her lips, hard; she recoiled from him, and still his teeth were clamped over her lips that were livid now with pain. When at last he released her she was sobbing and her lips were bleeding and he, the European gentleman, with genuine regret crying Oh what did I do!—forgive me, I was carried away by passion, my darling. She cringed before him on her hands and knees her breasts swinging. Her enormous eyes. Shining like a beast’s. And wanting still to believe, how desperate to believe so within a few minutes she allowed herself to be persuaded it had been an accident, an accident of passion, an accident for which she was herself to blame being so lovely so desirable she’d made him crazed. Kissing her hands pleading for forgiveness and at last forgiven and tenderly he arranged her arms and legs, her head at the edge of the bed, her long wavy somewhat coarse golden-red hair undone from its braid hanging over onto the carpet. She would have screamed except he provided a rag to shove into her mouth, one in fact used for previous visitors in suite 181 of the Black River Inn.

  “How can you be so cruel, Alastor!”

  Laughing, Alastor had recounted this lurid story for his brother Lyle as the two sat beside the hotel pool in the balmy dusk of an evening in late June. Lyle had listened with mounting dismay and disgust and at last cried out; Alastor said carelessly, “‘Cruel’?—why am I ‘cruel’? The women love it, brother. Believe me.”

  Lyle felt ill. Not knowing whether to believe Alastor or not—wondering if perhaps the entire story had been fabricated, to shock. Yet there was something matter-of-fact in Alastor’s tone that made Lyle think, yes, it’s true. He wished he’d never dropped by the Black River Inn to visit with Alastor, as Alastor had insisted. And he would not have wished to acknowledge even to himself that Alastor’s crude story had stirred him sexually.