Victory Over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist

skeletons. Come have the waffles.”
    â€œWhat was his name? Your uncle’s name?”
    â€œHis name was Robert. I told you that. Now, please come on. The waffles are getting cold.” Anna replaced the photograph on the dresser, laying it down beside a catalog and a bill for repairing the screens. She opened a dresser drawer. A Scrabble set was there, a half-finished double-crostic, a jar of suppositories, a silver doubloon, a comb. The mysterious drawers of summer houses, she thought, secrets no real house would hoard or remember.
    â€œCome on,” Armand called. “Or I’m throwing your waffles to the birds.”
    â€œI want to get a paper on the way to the airport,” she said, going into the breakfast room. “I want to see if the paper reviewed my book. God only knows who they’ll give it to. They gave the last one to a Jesuit. Can you believe it? He said I made unjustified attacks on the Church. Unjustified. Isn’t that wonderful?”
    Lady Margaret and Devoie came off the highway and down a narrow road between pine trees. The trees looked wet. The earth looked wet. The buzzards circling the trees looked wet. Even the modern road could not make the swamp look like anything but a swamp. On the outskirts of the town small businesses and restaurants began to appear, grimy and tacky, wet and forlorn. Fried Chicken, a sign said. Fried Catfish, said another. Thibodeaux Insures You, Lakefront Rentals, Golden Acres, Lots.
    At a corner Cajun women were selling shrimp from a truck. Beside a fruit stand piles of melons rotted in the sun. It was getting hotter. A high wind had chased the clouds away without stirring a single leaf on the ground.
    â€œWe’ll be able to sunbathe,” Lady Margaret said. “Thank God for that.” They crossed a bridge, turned at a light, entered a driveway, and came to a stop before the house. It was set in the middle of a yard lush with live oaks and catalpa and eucalyptus and pine. A beautiful yard leading down to the largest private beach on the river. The yard was a park, was everything a yard should be.
    But there was something wrong with the house. It disturbed the eye. From any angle it disturbed the eye. There was something wrong, something badly wrong, something disproportionate and Procrustean and wrong.
    Once the house had been a proud resort hotel. It had been three stories high. Couples came over on the ferry from New Orleans to spend the weekend and dance in the bathhouse and play in the small brown river. That was when the property had been a public beach. During the Depression the city of Mandeville had sold all its public beaches. Lady Margaret’s grandfather had bought the place for a song and left it to his children.
    As soon as Lady Margaret’s mother inherited it she bought out her sisters and went to work to improve the property. She conceived the idea of lowering the house a floor to save on electricity. All one summer she labored with carpenters and a house-moving man. Every day she drove across the old railroad bridge to oversee the modernization project. Then she called in the painters.
    The result was a squat green hulk surrounded by porches. It looked like a fat lady seated on a stool with her skirts spread out around her. “Crayfish,” the house seemed to say. “Come and get your crayfish. Crayfish for sale. Fresh crayfish waiting for the pot.”
    â€œHere’s the house,” Lady Margaret said. “And there’s Armand’s car. So he’s still here.”
    â€œWe should have called. There’s no telling what’s going on in there.”
    â€œOh, my God, Devoie. It’s a big house. He can’t be doing it in every room. Well, I’m going in and put on my suit. I’m white as snow. I haven’t been in the sun in days.”
    â€œYou go in. I’m changing in the beach house. I’ll wait for you down there.” Devoie started down the path to the