“Dad?”
“Why wasn’t it me? I’m old, living is a burden. It should have been me. It was my turn. Why did He take Annamay when it was my turn?”
“Stop that now. You’ll make it harder for Kay.”
“But it was my turn, Howard, you know that. There has been a serious miscalculation. When I was running my business a gross error like that could not have occurred, and if it had, would have been severely punished. No one seems to be in charge anymore. Oh, I realize you think I’m irrational at times, Howard, but not now, not about this. It was my turn.”
“Don’t, Dad.”
“The whole operation has been poorly run. Seniority was ignored and people were taken out of turn. Those are the key words, Howard. Seniority and turn. I am an old man and it was my turn.”
“We’ll discuss it later, Dad.”
“There wouldn’t be any point in a discussion. The whole thing has been fraudulently mismanaged from the beginning. When your mother died it was bad enough. But this, this—”
“Later, Dad,” Howard said. “Please.”
The old man had been going downhill for a couple of years and Annamay’s death had accelerated his decline. He confused God and the President, the Twelve Apostles, the Supreme Court and the members of the cabinet and the board of directors of Bethlehem Steel.
He made grandiose plans to go to Moscow and Peking, London and Berlin, to straighten out misunderstandings which would never have happened if a good businessman had been in charge in the first place. Lesser plans, like dental appointments and visits to the doctor, were often abandoned as trivial, or simply forgotten.
He wrote notes to himself on bits of paper and backs of envelopes which Kay and Chizzy were always coming across in odd places throughout the house.
Fertilize roses.
Avoid eating pizza.
Future of jojoba oil? Ask McPherson.
Buy valentine for Annamay.
Remind Howard re aviatronics merger.
Tell Chizzy not to sing in kitchen. Or elsewhere.
Newf and Shep need grooming.
Howard was very patient with his father. Kay was occasionally sharp. She thought his lapses of memory could be controlled if he really tried. And so he tried. But the more he tried the more he failed, and the more he failed the more impatient Kay became.
Chizzy and Annamay were his chief allies. Chizzy knew he couldn’t help forgetting; Annamay didn’t care. What he forgot wasn’t as important as what he remembered, what he did. He tied excellent knots in things, he repaired doll furniture, cleaned dogs’ ears and removed foxtails from their paws. He played Grand Duke at royal parties in the palace and listened to Annamay’s dreadful renditions of Minuet in G and Dance of the Hours on the piano. He would clap his hands and say, “Splendid, splendid.” Since Annamay had no talent at all for music and consequently no idea how many wrong notes she struck, she was only slightly surprised at her grandfather’s appraisal.
“I must have improved,” she said. “The teacher told my mother last week that I had a tin ear.”
“What nonsense. Neither of your ears looks the least bit like tin to me.”
“Don’t you think the Dance of the Hours sounded a little funny in spots?”
“In a few spots, perhaps. But by and large it was a fine performance.”
During the weeks following Annamay’s disappearance, Mr. Hyatt fell into a routine. He left the house early in the morning with the two dogs at his heels, and spent the day wandering around the property, usually within sight of the palace. The palace itself had been sealed by order of the Sheriff’s Department and no one could get inside. But the old man and the dogs waited patiently, as if they expected the princess to return at any moment with stories of her royal adventure. When the bones were finally found and identified, Mr. Hyatt had to explain to Newf and Shep that the princess would not be coming home again.
“She would if she could, of course. You both know that. It is the result of shoddy management at the top level. Fair and honorable business practices have been cast aside. Annamay was taken instead of me.”
Newf wagged his great plumed tail as he always did at the sound of a human voice no matter what the words, and Shep licked the tears from the old man’s face the way he used to lick Annamay’s scraped knees and elbows.
At sunset the three of them trudged slowly back to the house. The dogs were hungry by this time but the old man had to be coaxed by Chizzy into eating even a small bowl of cereal or half a piece of toast.
“You’ll waste away,” Chizzy said. “Why, already you’re hardly more than skin and—”
She bit her tongue but it was too late. The old man began to cry again. He pushed the bowl of cereal away and went up to his room to lie on the bed with his face to the wall. Of all the tears shed, his were the bitterest. They offered him no relief; they blistered his eyelids and puckered his skin like brine. He told Howard he’d been turned into a pillar of salt, and explained how this happened:
“It should have been Lot’s wife who was turned into the pillar of salt as in the Book of Genesis. But the head of the salt-mining company made a gross error. He must be replaced, Howard.”
“I’ll see to it,” Howard said.
“You’re a good boy, Howard.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“And Kay is a good girl too. She forgets things but then once in a while I do myself… Does Kay know I love her?”
“I think so.”
“I’m glad to hear that. It’s a mistake to keep love a secret. I used to tell Annamay I loved her and she would tell me she loved me back twice as much. And then I would say I… well, it was like a little game, Howard.”
“Keep your father quiet,” Kay told Howard in a voice that was becoming more steely every week. “It’s for his sake we’re going through this charade.”
The months of waiting had aged her. Nights of violent dreams, days of horrible imaginings had dulled her lively blue eyes and stooped her shoulders and dissolved the flesh from her frame as though she were biologically degrading like the body of her only child. Her pretty blond hair looked stiff as straw. Even when she forced herself to smile the corners of her mouth wouldn’t turn upward. She appealed to no one for help or counsel. In bed at night she turned away from Howard and lay as lifeless as Marietta and Luella Lu in their bunk in the palace.
“You must come to me, Kay. You must let me comfort you, love you.”
“There isn’t anything left in me to love.”
“You’re my wife. I’m cold and lonely, I need to have you lying close to me.”
“I’m lying close to you.”
“I want to love you, Kay. Have I lost my wife as well as my child?”
“I don’t know.”
The person who tried hardest to bring the two together was Ben York. He’d expected them to cling to each other in such a crisis. When they didn’t, he begged Kay to be more loving and advised Howard to continue waiting with compassion and understanding. He appealed to Kay’s older sister, Vicki, who said Kay was terribly spoiled, always had been, and needed a course in deprivation like est. Old Mr. Hyatt’s explanation for the rift varied, but the same theme was repeated: One of the top executives had pressed the wrong button.
When Ben tried to talk to Kay and Howard together they regarded him like a stranger caught in the act of robbing their house, a bungling pathetic amateur.
“You’ve never been married, have you, Ben?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then butt out.”
Ben had known the Hyatts for a long time. Howard had given him his first job while he was in college, and arranged his most important assignment after he graduated from architectural school. His reputation was solidly established after he designed the Hyatts’ own house and the princess’s palace. He was considerably younger than they were but sometimes he felt like their older brother and sometimes like their son. He even had occasional dreams of living in the palace himself, and he would wake up contented and refreshed as if he’d been on holiday at a happier place and time.