Chapter 25
Katherine Street had no waffle iron in her kitchen, and Perry had cornered Francine Shaffer at the wake to ask if she had one he could borrow so he could make Della her anniversary waffle breakfast, a tradition he was dogged in perpetuating. He felt that if he surrounded Della with relative normalcy for the next couple of days in this forsaken house and town, their time at the lake would be that much more enjoyable. They still had a lot to talk about, their conversation just before dawn not-withstanding, but they had until they were old and grey to sort it all out.
He was about to pour the batter, a recipe given to him by a grateful client, when Eve Wyman wandered sleepily into the kitchen dressed in a revealing pink negligee, her hair a mass of artfully arranged curls. Shorter than Della's, a couple of false shades lighter, the cut was however remarkably similar and added to what Perry regarded more and more as a superficial resemblance to her daughter. The woman didn't possess Della's warmth or heart, and certainly not her sense of humor, and the lack of those attributes detracted from her physical attractiveness. He remembered that Eve had seen a newspaper picture of him and Della and wondered if the style of her hair was a complete coincidence. He would take nothing of Eve Wyman at face value, ever.
"Waffles!" she exclaimed in delight. "I haven't had waffles in years."
Perry calmly poured the batter onto the hot iron and closed the lid. He set the batter bowl on the counter and turned to face Della's mother. "These are for Della," he told her. Rudely, he hoped.
Judging by her face, his response had indeed been considered rude. But she covered her initial reaction beautifully as always. "Then I'll wait for the second batch."
Perry turned his back on her. "There won't be a second batch. There will be only these." She raised her eyebrows. "There is plenty of batter in that bowl for another waffle, Perry. Are you saying you won't make me one?"
"How perceptive of you, Mrs. Wyman. That is exactly what I'm saying." He could very easily pour the remaining batter into the iron, but loyalty to Della wouldn't allow it. He was beginning to think this house had cast the same spell of peevishness over him that it had cast over Della.
She walked past him to the coffee pot on the stove and poured herself a cup. After adding cream and sugar and stirring with the spoon Perry had used for his coffee, she leaned shapely hips against the counter. She wasn't quite as tall as her daughter, and slightly more rounded, her limbs not as long, her movements not as naturally graceful. "I'm getting the impression that you don't think much of me, Perry."
"I'm afraid you've grossly over-estimated my thoughts, Mrs. Wyman. I hardly think of you at all."
"You're not holding any animosity over our little run-in in the hallway the other night are you? I'm fully aware you've avoided me since that night. You needn't be embarrassed if you're attracted to me."
"I assure you my animosity was completely formed before you bumped into me that night, and that the last thing I am is attracted to you."
"You really are an impossible man to talk to, Perry." She regarded him with a bemused little smile that disguised her rising anger.
"Manipulative women like you are a dime a dozen, Mrs. Wyman. I admit you're a master at it, because not one man you've taken to the cleaners either emotionally or through his bank account will say an ill word about you. Actually, that's not quite right. Della's father might, but then he'd follow whatever he said by blaming himself for your behavior."
Eve Wyman banged her cup and saucer down on the counter, oblivious to the coffee that sloshed onto her filmy negligee. She stood facing him, her hands balled into fists. "How do you know what Paul Drake found out about me is true?"
"Of course it's true. Paul Drake is an exceptional detective," Perry replied calmly, raised the top of the waffle iron and poking a fork into one, lifted a corner from the appliance and checked its progress. He yanked the plug from the wall and quickly dislodged all four waffles, dividing them between two bone china plates and placing them on a tray that already held a small silver coffee service, two cups, a diamond cut glass sauce bowl containing syrup, and a matching glass bud vase with a single white rose. "I pay him a king's ransom in retainers plus exorbitant expenses so that I know exactly what I'm dealing with at all times. Mrs. Wyman, you can hide behind your illness for only so long, and I feel confident in telling you that Della has no desire to have anything but a forgettable passing acquaintance with you. Once we leave this house, I doubt you will ever see either of us again. Now if you'll excuse me, there is a hungry lady waiting for her waffles." He picked up the tray and exited the kitchen through the back door.
Eve Wyman waited until the screen door of the porch slammed behind him before grasping the jadeite batter bowl by the handle and letting it fall to the tiles at her feet and then reaching for the hot waffle iron.
Perry set the tray down on the low table and removed his robe, beneath which he wore only his boxers, and deposited it on the floor. He knelt next to the side of the featherbed where Della now lay sprawled on her stomach, nude and covered by the sheet only across her lower extremities. He resisted the urge to cup the luscious curve of her behind with his hands and instead bent to kiss her shoulder blade. She moaned deep in her throat and shifted restlessly, but didn't open her eyes. He kissed her again, this time below her ear, and she turned to circle his neck with one arm and bring his lips down to hers.
"Good morning," she said in a low, sleepy voice, letting him hold her splendid nakedness against his bare chest.
"Good morning, darling. Are you going to be a lazybones this morning or are you going to get up and see what I brought you?"
"I'm going to be a lazybones, Mr. Smarty Pants. I didn't get much sleep last night. Someone talked and talked and talked…" Perry dipped his head and silenced her with a heady kiss. "Oh, he did that a few times, too," she added.
Perry chuckled and kissed her again. "Sit up and look at what I brought you." He released her and she fell back against the pile of pillows before levering herself up on one arm to peer over his shoulder.
"Waffles!"
He nearly winced at how similar her exclamation was to her mother's after convincing himself the two women weren't similar at all. "Of course it's waffles. What did you expect for your anniversary breakfast?"
"But Grandmother didn't have a waffle iron. Father and Carter prefer pancakes." She scooted up into a proper sitting position and arranged the sheet around her lower half.
Perry picked up the tray once more and set it in the middle of the featherbed. He then climbed in next to her, careful not to jostle the tray. "You forget how resourceful I can be. I borrowed one from Fran Shaffer."
She was almost giddy with happiness, hands clasped beneath her chin in anticipation of tasting his handiwork as he buttered a plate of waffles and poured warm syrup over them. "I can't believe you did that."
"What kind of an anniversary would it be without waffles? You yourself said we should maintain traditions." He cut the waffles into bite-size pieces and passed the plate to her.
"It would be a lovely anniversary no matter if I had waffles or not." She speared two pieces and placed them in her mouth. The waffles were melt-in-her-mouth perfection and she closed her eyes in utter joy. "But having them makes it especially lovely."
It truly was a sight, Della nude from the waist up, propped against a pile of pillows on the featherbed pallet, happily eating waffles, and one that Perry hoped never to forget. Despite what he'd said the night before, he did like this tiny apartment and what she had done to assure they would be alone outside of the house. They could be rambunctious in their lovemaking, and knowing that no one would hear them had erased all previous barriers. He knew his intense drive to give her pleasure like never before had initially startled her, but she had quickly recovered and given herself to him with complete trust that made him love her all the more.
In his younger days he had participated in sex as a feel-good diversion with more women than he would like to remember, and although these encounters had been primarily for his own gratification he was at all times a gentleman and maintained the high standard of actually going through the motions of courting a woman before bedding her. It was Laura Cavanaugh who had snatched him from those ultimately unfulfilling relationships, but even their physical relations had been a raw act of near-aggression culminating in an empty release, a vapid plateau that served his physical desires but not his emotional needs.
He discovered the art of making love with Della, and it was a glorious revelation of sensation on multiple levels, a never-ending adventure that fulfilled every possible desire both physical and emotional. She teased him sometimes about a lack of variety in positions, but he wanted to see her face, wanted to look into her eyes to her very soul because he was making love to her, the woman he was in love with. It was fun, it felt good, and there was plenty of lust involved, but if not for who she was and how he loved her, it would be as empty as it had been with those other women, a couple of whom he had actually formed quite an affection for.
He found it fascinating to be in love, to think of Della first in everything, his happiness directly linked to hers. And right now, watching her eat the waffles he had prepared for her with all the love she'd inexplicably found in him, gave him more pleasure than every single one of those forgotten women from his past rolled into one enormous euphoric peak.
He sucked in his breath sharply as drips of syrup falling from the last bite of waffle landed on her chest. He set down his empty plate and leaned over to lick the sticky drops from her perfect breasts before she could wipe them away. She held her plate aloft with one hand and placed her other hand at the back of his head buried in the thick black waves as his wondrous tongue and demanding mouth made quick work of the syrup and then travelled to a most responsive part of her anatomy. Her breathing became shallow and she closed her eyes as he pressed her further into the stack of pillows behind her.
Never lifting his head, he reached up, took the plate from her, and set it perfectly in the center of the tray. With his foot he pushed the tray toward the end of the featherbed and sat back, bringing Della to sit astride him. She arched her back and…someone gasped.
Della's eyes flew open immediately in panic. The gasp had been feminine but it hadn't been her.
Perry pulled up the sheet to cover Della and wrapped his arms protectively around her, his eyes locked onto something at the far end of the room. "Henny!"
"Oh God, oh God, oh God," Henny cried, flinging her arms over her face and stumbling back toward the stair landing. "I'm sorry! I knocked and called but no one answered!" She clattered down the stairs much more noisily than the journey up. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but Mrs. Wyman has had an accident and probably needs to be taken to the hospital and she said you were out here Mr. Mason, and I thought you were sleeping because you didn't answer. I didn't know you weren't alone…" her voice trailed to nothing as she reached the bottom of the stairs and more than likely sprinted out the door and across the lawn back to the house.
Della felt a giggle building in her belly that they had been so enraptured of one another they couldn't hear Henny enter the apartment. Perry frowned at her as she began to shake with helpless laughter. "Laugh now, but I think that poor woman may be emotionally scarred for life, and quite possibly blinded."
Della collapsed against him in a fit of hysterical giggles. "I – I th-th-think you might b-be right about that," she agreed haltingly between titters. "Where is my robe? We should go see what that woman has done now."
Perry hoisted Della from his lap, got to his feet and reached back to help her up from the featherbed pallet on the floor. "Your robe is hanging on the bathroom door knob. Do what you need to do to make yourself presentable and come down. I'll go right now."
Before she could protest, he had snatched his robe from the floor and run from the apartment.
Della pawed through the pile of clothing on the floor at the foot of the featherbed for her panties and dashed to the tiny bathroom. Moments later she was tying the sash of her robe around her middle and running barefoot across the damp lawn to the house, where she found Perry in the kitchen with a hovering Henny and a piteously sobbing Eve Wyman who was seated in a kitchen chair, holding her left arm across her chest, rocking back and forth and refusing to allow Perry to see her injury.
"It's all your fault!" she screamed shrilly at him. "If you had been nice to me and made me a waffle this wouldn't have happened." She moaned, low and keening, and broke into fresh hysterical sobs.
"Mrs. Wyman, I fetched Mr. Mason because you said you'd let him look at your hand and decide whether or not you should go to the hospital." Henny wrung her hands, eyes darting in nervous embarrassment from Perry to Della.
"What happened, Mrs. Wyman? We can't help if we don't know what happened."
But Eve Wyman merely continued to rock to and fro, clutching her arm and crying.
"I think she burned her hand," Henny said in a hushed voice, as if saying it louder might cause the injured woman more distress. "But she wouldn't let me see."
Perry pulled another chair opposite Eve Wyman and placed his hands on her knees. "Mrs. Wyman…Eve…we want to help you. I'm sorry if you think whatever happened is my fault, but you really have to let me see your hand."
"If she burned her hand, why is there blood on the floor?" Della asked, moving around the opposite side of the table to the section of counter where the waffle iron sat, lid down. On the floor directly beneath it were the shattered remains of the pale green glass batter bowl surrounded by splatters of bloody batter as well as a smeared patch containing full footprints. A trail of blood and batter led to where Eve Wyman was now seated in the wooden chair.
Perry whipped his head back to Eve Wyman. "Eve, what happened? What did you do?"
"I tried to make myself a waffle because you wouldn't!" Eve Wyman screeched.
Perry slapped her face with the back of his hand. "Settle down. Tell us where you hurt yourself."
"There's blood all over the bottom of her negligee. She's literally sitting in a pool of her own blood for Heaven's sake," Della pointed out disgustedly.
Perry slapped Eve's face once again, harder than before, and she ceased her sobbing and rocking. "Stop slapping me," she hissed, eyes narrowed.
"Then cooperate so we can help you," he bit back harshly. "If you won't let me see your hand and feet, will you let Henny or Della?"
Eve Wyman slumped against the back of the chair. "I want Jameson. He's been nice to me."
Perry looked up at Henny, who shook her head. "He's at the mill. I can call, but he's with some people from a mill in New York. They came to see the sludge pits and were all outside when I left. They're going to have lunch here at one."
"Call him anyway," Perry instructed.
Henny hesitated a moment before moving over to the wall where the phone was mounted.
"Eve, we need to look at your feet. You're bleeding badly."
"My feet don't hurt. It's my hand!" She swayed woozily in the chair, her face suddenly deathly pale. "I don't feel well," she announced, and abruptly threw up on Perry.
After removing three large shards of jadeite glass from Eve Wyman's left foot and wrapping it tightly with strips cut from her grandmother's hand-embroidered dishcloths, Della turned her attention to the waffle patterned burn on both the palm and back of her mother's left hand. There were a couple of blisters forming on the palm, several angry red welts on the back of the hand, and the hand in general appeared to be swollen. Eve agreed to submerge it in cool water, but as soon as Della gently placed her injured hand in a bowl she screamed long and loud. Her arm jerked and the bowl shot across and over the edge of the table, falling to the floor with a crash and a splash. Henny hung up the phone and hurried to Della's side.
"Jameson will meet you at the hospital as soon as he can" she said, her eyes huge in her shiny, flushed face. "What do you want me to do?"
Eve had gone limp and Della was struggling to keep her upright in the chair and out of the stinky mess of blood, vomit, and waffle batter on the floor. "Help me hold her in a sitting position. I think she's passed out."
"She has not," Eve Wyman disagreed groggily.
"Then sit up straight Mrs. Wyman."
"I will if you call me Eve."
"There is no bargaining allowed, Mrs. Wyman. Either you sit up or I let you fall into this mess on the floor."
"Maybe I'll throw up on you, too."
"Oh for the love of Mike," Della exclaimed, using Paul Drake's and Perry's favorite phrases of exasperation. "Sit up, Eve."
"Do you notice it smells like whiskey in here? On top of the blood and vomit, I mean." Henny whispered urgently to Della as the two women managed to lift Eve into a sitting position.
"'Course it smells like whiskey," Eve piped up. "I had some. It helped."
"Helped what? Helped with the pain?"
Eve Wyman shook her head and paled once again. Della and Henny stepped quickly to either side of the injured woman. "With courage."
Perry entered the kitchen at that moment, freshly showered and dressed in khaki shorts, a black collared golf shirt, and sandals.
"She broke more glass," Della warned. "And she appears to be drunk."
Perry gingerly picked his way over the slippery tile floor to Eve Wyman's side once again. "Go get dressed, Della. Henny and I will take care of Eve."
Eve gave him a goofy, unfocused look. "He calls me Eve now, too," she said in a triumphant slur.
Della straightened, took one step, and slipped in the sticky, rancid fluids on the floor. She fell against the counter and knocked the waffle iron with her elbow. Expecting to feel a burn on her own arm, she was surprised to find it cool to the touch. "Perry," she began, dropping her eyes to the footprints in the batter on the floor.
But he was completely engrossed in examining the burn on Eve Wyman's hand while she sat in a virtual stupor. "Please get dressed, Della. We need to get Eve to the hospital. Henny, is there any gauze in the house?"
Della made her way to the door by holding on to the counter for support. At the doorway, she wiped her bare feet on the dishtowel Perry had used previously and took off for the stairs at a dead run. She had her robe off almost before closing the bathroom door and immediately turned on the faucet to run a few inches of water. She stepped in and took a quick 'bird bath', throwing water over her body before standing and wrapping herself in a towel. She then sat on the edge of the tub to furiously scrub her feet. The smell was incredible and she hoped good old Palmolive would mask the stench. Damn that woman anyway. What the hell was she still doing in the house anyway? If they didn't know already she was mentally unbalanced, this fiasco would have clued them in.
She crossed the hall to her bedroom and was glad she hadn't sent her old daisy skirt to the cleaners with the men's suits yesterday. She grabbed undergarments from the top drawer of the dresser, towel dried her skin vigorously, jumped into the skirt and knotted an oversize blouse she'd brought with her at her waist. The scuffed white flats weren't in her closet or anywhere in sight and she lost valuable seconds looking for them before finally dropping to her knees and pulling up the bedspread to find them underneath the bed. Eschewing stockings, make-up, and even a brush, she grabbed the large straw purse from Skogmo's, and several towels from the hall linen closet before heading down the hallway to the room her mother had been inhabiting. The room was a disaster of exploded suitcases, clothing carelessly strewn on every conceivable surface, and it took Della two full minutes to locate Eve's purse on a chair beneath a pile of what she hoped was clean underwear.
Perry was holding an unconscious Eve in his arms while Henny diligently cut several inches from the bottom of the woman's negligee with the kitchen shears used to destroy Katherine Street's dishtowels when Della re-entered the indescribably foul-smelling room. The odor knocked her back on her heels and her breakfast was perilously close to being added to the mess on the floor. She gripped the counter and steeled herself against the distasteful chore ahead of her.