The Necklace by Claire McMillan
For Sandy, again and always
. . . and I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in.
—Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
2009
THE BLACKBUCK
Before it all begins, Nell looks up at the arched gables, hesitates at the heavy front door. Everything here is a test. No Quincy, not even a peripheral one, knocks unless she aggressively wants to announce herself. A true Quincy would bound in, secure in her welcome. But Nell creaks open the door and silently slips through like an intruder.
Lighted by the wavy leaded glass windows, a taxidermy antelope head gazes down with hazy glass eyes. An Indian blackbuck—she thinks someone told her this as a child. The ears show patches, as if something’s been nibbling them. Bits of fur and dust fuzz the floor beneath it. A time-warp feeling settles over Nell like weather. She sneezes.
Her cousin Pansy looks over from the living room and mouths “Gesundheit,” then turns back to the small group of women Nell should recognize but doesn’t, no doubt in conference over last-minute details for Loulou’s wake tomorrow.
What does one call Quincys in multiple? A clutch? That’s eggs. A murder? That’s crows. A judgment? That’s perfect. A judgment of Quincys brings to mind her ancestor Increase Quincy and his infamous verdicts at Salem, and makes her wonder if judgment is encoded in the Quincy double helix.
She feels an arm around her waist and a kiss on her cheek. “Nell-bell.” Her cousin Emerson, Pansy’s younger brother, is Nell’s age and adheres to the male Quincy uniform of dark suit and tie. Despite this, he’s rumpled. His tie with a pattern of tiny clocks is fraying at the wide end. He smells like he’s been here for at least a few Old Grand-Dads.
“Hey.” She gives his waist an extra squeeze, and lets it go that he knows she hates that nickname. She hasn’t seen him in years. Then again, a few years is not particularly long between her and the Quincys.
Her parents preferred living in Oregon, where they’d met, and where Nell lives now. They’d put a country between themselves and the Quincys reflexively sizing them up. Despite this removal, Nell’s mother would insist they make a pilgrimage here most summers. She’d instruct Nell for the length of the car ride from the airport to use her best manners—please, thank you, pass the hors d’oeuvres before taking one for yourself. She’d turn fully in her seat, lean over the armrest, and inspect Nell’s fingernails for dirt while her father drove.
A transformation would come over her parents here. Her mother would become brittle, short with everyone, even Nell’s father, whom she adored. Her usually witty and erudite father would go silent. They’d both drink bourbon at lunch, something Nell never saw them do anywhere else. And Aunt Loulou, as her mother called her, would lead everyone into that big dining room for luncheon. She’d seat herself at the head of a table that gleamed with silver and yellowing brocade and proceed to dominate the conversation with the self-assurance of a favorite child who had never been told to shut up. It was here she’d dish out what Nell’s father witheringly referred to as “Loulou Lessons.”
“Only wear fur between Halloween and Valentine’s Day,” Loulou had said once when Nell was seated next to her. An unusual honor. Loulou had a confidential, chummy tone in her voice that day. Nell had been conscious of her table manners and had taken miniscule bites. She still can’t remember what she ate. The glamour of the statement had delighted her, though now she wonders at imparting this lesson to a ten-year-old. Her mother’s lips grew tight across the table. She volunteered at the wildlife animal sanctuary. No one they knew in Oregon wore fur. But this piece of advice seemed important to Nell if she were to become a Quincy-type grown-up. One would have furs, and of course one would follow the rules for wearing them.
“Red shoes should really only be worn by very small children and prostitutes,” Loulou said to Nell’s mother once when she thought Nell was out of earshot. “Don’t you think she’s getting a little old for those?” Though Nell didn’t know what a prostitute was, she was no baby and she’d refused to wear the red patent Mary Janes after that, much to her mother’s exasperation. Until then, they’d been favorites.
And the one she could never remember without a hot flush, even now, happened on the same day as the fur instructions. “Picking one’s teeth should be done in private, dear,” Loulou had stage-whispered loud enough that everyone at the table heard. “Like most pleasurable things.” She’d turned to Nell’s mother. “Really, she should know the basics, shouldn’t she?” As Nell’s ears reddened, she’d watched in baffled delight as her mother stuck her finger in her mouth, aiming toward a back molar. Her father had choked on his bourbon, silently laughing.
Today, Emerson steers Nell by the arm into the flower room, which has always served as the bar, and tries to get her to drink whiskey with him, though it’s only lunchtime. She accepts a glass. It’s easier than openly refusing.
“Is Vlad here?” she asks. Emerson’s partner, Vlad, works in the conservation department of the Met and is a great favorite of all Quincys. He’d come close to walking away after demanding that Emerson stop being ashamed and come out to the family. Nell still couldn’t believe Emerson had manned up and brought Vlad to the farm. “This is a farm?” Vlad had asked. Emerson had explained to his Czech lover, product of a communist childhood, the concept of a gentleman’s farm.
“No, he’s not,” Emerson says now, sadly. “Work. But he wanted to come. They were buds, you know.”
Nell did know. Vlad had managed to charm Loulou with his European manners and wide knowledge of art.
“I’m not a hayseed,” she’d scolded Emerson after Vlad’s first visit. “Why have you kept him away?”
“So that’s why you’ve started early,” Nell says now. “If he were here, he wouldn’t allow it.”
“If he were here, I wouldn’t need it.”