Free Foul Matter by Martha Grimes

the history so abundant—Ned could touch it and taste it, like the smooth ripe fruit in the porcelain bowl on the marble-topped commode. He stood looking at the portraits that hung above the fireplace and to the right of the mahogany butler’s desk at which Saul sometimes sat and wrote, liking its position near one of the long windows that opened over the street and whose thin curtains were buffeted by summer winds. He could sit and look out, he said.
    The portraits were of his grandfather and great-grandfather; a third portrait of his father, the smile he wore in the picture that hung between the windows was particularly chilly, only barely a smile. All of them looked equally serious, as if a scowl were the only way to get the job done.
    On the other side of the window, though, were two small oval frames of some rich and seemingly pliant wood. One was a sepia print and the other a charcoal drawing of the same woman, who was Saul’s grandmother. Her beauty was almost unnerving, for one had to wonder how in God’s name she could manage ever to coexist with the no-nonsense menfolk in this abstemious household. Even though neither picture was in color, Ned could still see it from Saul’s description: reddish gold hair and eyes of the dark blue of lapis lazuli.
    Saul’s grandfather and great-grandfather were men of so grim an aspect that they looked as if they embodied every homily on thrift and the curative powers of work imaginable. They would probably be scandalized to find they would live out their days in these opulent gilt frames overseeing their descendant who sat around writing.
    But they were also powerful paintings that looked as if the artist had sucked out the soul of his subjects and returned them to the canvas, reconstituted. That was how alive they looked.
    “Don’t look at him too long; he’ll burn your cornea,” said Saul, coming in through the dining room carrying a whole coffee service on a heavy silver tray. He poured out coffee for both of them into thin, nearly transparent cups. He handed one to Ned, then he retrieved his cigar from a heavy glass ashtray that the sun, striking it suddenly, turned to a swirl of blue. Saul had to light the cigar again to get it going.
    Both of them remained standing, looking at the inhospitable trio on the wall. Saul said, “The irony is, of course, that the life I lead is far more austere and rigorous than anything they could ever have devised, much more than were their own lives. I don’t do anything. Their ghosts probably move about, watching me in the exciting act of holding a pen. My grandfather was a legendary ladies’ man; and old Noah, there”—he nodded toward the portrait near the butler’s desk—“was addicted to both gambling and booze. How boring I must seem in comparison. No, they wouldn’t be able to stand me, you know. Too dull, a dull life, nothing in it but writing and reading. For them, it was all action, and most of the action was aimed at making money. That was probably their recreation, too, together with slipping at night across the back porch of the lady of the moment. How in hell did I descend from such people? Maybe I’m a changeling. More coffee?” Saul raised the silver coffeepot.
    Ned held out his cup. “That was your father’s side, but what about your mother?”
    “I remember my mother only as an unobtrusive woman, silent, but never quite still, always moving, like a fleeting shadow. But I always remember myself as stationary. That window seat there—I spent my childhood in it, reading. That gold cord that holds back the drape? I can remember pulling at it or working the threads apart as I sat there. I’m surprised it held up at all. My reading drove them all crazy; I don’t think they read a book through, in spite of the library back there.” He nodded toward a room behind him. “Reading was what I did. Funny, but I think that was my way of rebelling, instead of dope or fast cars or fucking. Reading. It was only a