Fallen Beauty (26 page)

January 1931

VINCENT

Though it is midday, Laura instructs me to drive the sleigh to the front of the store. She does not speak of it now, but I know she no longer wishes to hide from Marie. She is tired of untruths. She sits up straight next to me with Grace on her lap. Eugen is bundled on the backseat. I point out birds’ nests to Grace as we travel, but when we approach Main Street, we become silent. We are all watching for Marie.

The first sight that comes into view is the completed statue of the Virgin. The tent over her has been removed, and she stands in awe-inspiring glory. The light shines on the statue’s face, and Laura draws in her breath as I do the same. We are distracted by the beauty and pure humanity the sculptor has infused into the Virgin’s countenance. So many likenesses of her are impersonal, gazing at nothing, passive, anonymous. This woman is distinct. Her gaze faces downward, but not with a demure turn of the head. She lords over the snake. Her brow is pulled high and back, and a smile of satisfaction touches her full lips. Her eyes, though still unsettlingly white and round in marble, are heavily lidded, and her hair escapes her veil in pieces, rather than parting in neat chunks.

The second sight in town makes me pull the reins to stop the sleigh.

There is a mob. The townspeople fill the street between the church and Laura’s shop. They stand in clusters in boots and coats, staring at the front of the church.

Laura mutters, “What is this?”

I recognize Father Ash, Mrs. Perth and her husband, and Dr. Hagerty as he joins the crowd. There is also a heavyset man with a black doctor’s bag at his feet, a group of finely dressed women, and Agnes Dwyer, who stands next to a man in impressive clerical vestments. Agnes wears a strange smile, and when she sees us, she gets a wild look in her eyes.

“Is the statue being dedicated?” I ask.

Laura looks from the Virgin to the crowd and relaxes a bit, though she pulls Grace closer to her side. “I guess so. I must have forgotten.”

But this does not feel like a dedication. There is tension in the air. While the clergyman I don’t recognize speaks the blessing, Agnes drops her hand to the purse on her arm, and slides it in front of her as if protecting its precious contents. Her gaze keeps slipping from the purse and back to us. Father Ash looks lost, and fidgets with his hands. Something is wrong.

I catch sight of Marie and Everette, though they have not yet noticed us. “Do you want me to come closer, or turn back?”

Laura nods that I should proceed. She told me last night that she is prepared to confront her sister with the truth and face whatever the consequences.

As we approach, townspeople emerge from the houses and storefronts. The brothers who work at the market arrive, as do Agnes’ raven-haired daughter and her doctor husband, whom I now know was Laura’s lover. They begin to notice us. We stop behind them and listen to the words of the prayer the clergyman says as he raises his arm toward the statue. Father Ash lights incense in the censer and they begin to process toward the statue when Agnes suddenly shouts.

“Wait!”

The group halts. Some of the women wear expressions of unease.

“I wasn’t going to do this, but seeing Laura Kelley with
that woman
is a sign that I must. From God. For the sake of this town.”

As the townspeople turn to look at us, I realize I am the woman to whom Agnes has referred. She assumes a position on the top step of the church entranceway, and I feel strongly that she thinks she is on a stage and we are her audience.

“Women like them,” says Agnes in a shrill voice, “are poison to this town.”

There are gasps, and I dare to look at Laura. She is clearly confused.

“It’s all here in
Father
Ash’s diary,” she says. Agnes reaches into her purse and lifts out a brown leather book. I hear an intake of breath followed by furious whispers. Father Ash loses his color. He might faint.

“His journal,” whispers Laura. “Why does Agnes have that?”

“Allow me to enlighten all of you,” says Agnes. She clears her throat and begins to read:

“Laura stands with her hands out, one clutching her hat, and her head thrown back. Tears glisten on her face, the sun warms her soft blond hair, and her ripe, round body is like fruit on a tree—sweet enough to pluck. She looks like the Madonna herself.”

Laura looks at me with shock, and then at Father Ash, who makes himself a shadow, an impotent thing with no fight in him.

“If Laura knew how often I watched her, she might be frightened of me.

“The window of my writing desk in the rectory faces her shop across the square. From my room I can see Laura—her soft blond curls mingling with those of the child as they bend over a book, the light catching the child’s glasses. I ache at their vulnerability. Watching them is like watching the same girl at two phases of her life—before and after innocence—and as much as they break my heart, as much as the mother does something else to it, I can’t tear my eyes away.”

It occurs to me that someone needs to stop this horrid witch from exposing the priest’s private thoughts, but not one of us has the strength of character to stop listening in morbid fascination.

“The great irony is that I can watch and love anonymously, while her sin must be forever tethered to her. I’ve tried to tell her of my sorrow so often with my eyes, but she rarely meets them. No matter how I’ve assured her in the confessional, she never truly believes that her sin was long ago forgiven, while mine simmers like a slow burn from the inside out. I imagine my insides scorched as my longing flares up in those blessed, cursed moments when she is inches from me, on the other side of a screen. Veiled.

“I try to embrace the purer aspects of my feelings toward her: my great sorrow for her loneliness, my admiration for her strength and the way she loves the child, her love of her sister.

“The crackle of the candle distracts me. I turn my eyes toward my homily book and see that I’ve written two words: Loneliness. Loyalty. I stare at them until Laura’s relationship with the words blurs into mine, and the lesson I needed to find makes itself clear to me. My loneliness is a virtue. I must stay loyal to my vows.

“Ready now to write my homily, I pray that no one will find me hidden in the words. Preaching to others the lessons I need to hear is a delicate dance. From my youth, I never suspected the priests as being anything less than perfect. I thought their words came from their wish for our purity to match theirs, and ultimately God’s. Now, being on this side of the altar, I feel a new kinship with my brothers. To stand before people who respect me so much, and to know that their idle worship is so misplaced is humbling.

“No. It is agonizing.”

Some saint emerges, climbs the stairs, and grabs the diary from Agnes’ hands. She is shocked that a man would make so violent a move toward her. It is the sculptor, who has been approaching slowly, but who hurried as he caught her indictments on the wind.

“For God’s sake, what are you at, woman?” he shouts.

“I am showing this town that the depth and breadth of scandal with Laura Kelley at its epicenter are more awful than any of us could have imagined,” she says.

Laura shakes her head as if she can’t accept what she’s hearing, this confession of deep love that no one was ever meant to hear. This malicious woman has somehow gotten her gnarled claws in the priest’s chest and pulled out his heart for all to see. And then I realize why. She thinks he is Grace’s father. I can see by the panic in Laura’s eyes that she realizes that fact too.

The choir women reveal a curious mixture of emotions. None will look at Laura. Some stare with open horror at Father Ash. Some hold arms crossed over bosoms, calculating how they can say they knew all along. One is heartbroken. Simply devastated. She cries into her handkerchief.

“How did you come by this diary?” asks the impressively dressed cleric, whose incense has made a cloud over them.

“Sissy cleans the rectory.” The witch points at the sobbing woman. “She saw it open and read Laura’s name. She thought she’d give it to Miss Kelley, but she couldn’t help read it. When she discovered the scandal on its pages, she knew what she had to do. And thank goodness for that. We can’t allow this vile corruption to poison our community any longer.”

Now interrupting this horror comes Marie, the sister. Swollen with pregnancy and in a rage even greater than Agnes’.

“How could you?” Marie emerges out of the crowd, approaching the sleigh where we sit and speaking in a dark voice that comes from deep inside her belly, behind where she grows her child. Her anger is bigger than her sorrow, so no tears touch her eyes. Her hatred is stoked every time she sets her eyes on me.

Laura’s breathing is shallow and quick. She thought she would come home to a private confrontation with her sister. Now she is being flogged in public by a madwoman. I want to take her back up the mountain, out of harm’s way.

“You’ve betrayed me,” says Marie, walking closer. “You are worse than Everette, worse than anyone.”

“She is with us because she needed money,” says Eugen. “That is all. Don’t add to this trouble.”

“Shut your mouth,” says Marie. “We don’t need the help of another philanderer.”

“Marie, please,” says Laura. Her voice is somehow steady and resigned. This was the argument she’d been expecting, after all, though not in the middle of the street.

“I’m not finished,” pronounces Agnes. She cannot stand that the attention is slipping away from her performance. “I’ve also heard rumors of Miss Kelley leaving her child alone in the house on multiple occasions to go down to the pond where those Gypsies have been drinking. No doubt the bacchanalias would draw a harlot like her, but I don’t think we are safe with such people nearby.”

“Silence,” says the sculptor. “You are in the presence of an innocent child.”

I’ve almost forgotten Grace, but now feel her shivering beside me.

“That is where all of this is leading,” says Agnes, turning to address the clergyman. “I would like to call the police and report Laura Kelley for adultery, fornication, imbibing, and child endangerment. That girl will have no kind of life with that woman. A report needs to be filed immediately with the New York Society of the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.”

Laura wears a look of sheer terror. “No,” she whispers, drawing Grace closer to her.

The cleric places the censer on the ground. “Enough,” he says. “We cannot address this here.”

He takes the priest by the arm and begins to lead him into the church. Father Ash says nothing. He makes no move to defend himself. He is defeated. He must feel he deserves this condemnation for harboring such feelings. I ache for him, and for Laura, and panic rises in my own chest. Laura must speak out. She must tell the truth.

“With these charges,” continues Agnes, “shouldn’t the child be taken into custody until there may be a hearing?”

I move to shake the reins, to remove Laura and Grace from this madness, when Laura shouts, “No!”

She has found her anger. Grace finally understands the trouble and begins to cry. Laura tightens her arms around her. Father Ash’s face turns red and he looks as if he would like to run. The sculptor strides over to us, still clutching the diary, and stands next to where Laura sits in the sleigh.

“There is no substance to this woman’s lies,” he says. “You cannot take the words of this madwoman as evidence. We are a group of workers from the neighboring towns. We meet at the pond to sing and we’re forming a theater company. The child has been with us. There is no mischief.”

“You expect them to take your word over mine?” says Agnes. “Some shell-shocked hobo to whom Father Ash has given a charity job. We all see what he’s about.”

I am aghast at the depths of this woman’s animosity, and I don’t shock easily.

As Father Ash is led back into the church, Laura stands and screams for them to stop. “He is not her father,” she says. “I swear it.”

“How do you expect any of us to believe that?” says Agnes. “His diary, the way he is forever giving you charity through business. I saw the two of you alone before Mass, buried in the robes.”

“You see what you want to see,” says Laura.

Daniel Dempsey has moved to the back of the crowd, and is attempting to pull his wife with him. Laura has seen. No one notices them but the two of us. I look at Laura and feel a shift in the air around her. She no longer trembles. She is tall, erect, and devastatingly beautiful. I would fear her if I did not know her. She says a name.

“Daniel.”

The doctor stops, and all at once, the crowd quiets. Heads turn slowly to him. It seems that each person makes meaning of his name, one after another. His wife wrenches her arm out of his grip.

“The man you seek to expose is your son-in-law, Daniel Dempsey,” says Laura. She is holding Grace so close to her that they merge into one. I realize that Laura has not used the word
father
. She will not give that weak man who attempted to slither away just moments ago the honor of that title.

Gasps and exhalations rise all around. Marie lets out a sob and hurries away, down the street. Everette remains, his face still as stone. Father Ash looks at Laura with pity and gratitude. Daniel’s wife stands next to her mother. And Agnes is shocked. Really and truly shocked. She falters and her daughter grabs her arm, but it’s too late. Agnes has fainted on the church steps.

While the crowd closes in on the woman, I see Laura’s dry eyes, her calm face, the child clinging to her. Daniel hesitates for a moment before he goes to his mother-in-law. He repels the crowd around him. Laura squeezes Eugen’s shoulder and bends to embrace me. Her strength has moved me. I hold her and her daughter tightly to communicate my feelings because I am at a loss for words.

The sculptor holds up a hand to Laura, and helps her and Grace down from the sleigh. They walk to the shop and enter together, closing the door behind them.

LAURA

Grace wouldn’t let me put her down. She sensed my turbulence and the aftershocks from the scene outside the church. Gabriel hadn’t left. He kept peering out the front window and pacing like a wolf, though I assured him we were all right. The danger was over.

“I am humbled by your care for us,” I said.

“I couldn’t stand by and let that woman get away with such scandal.”

“She has just stepped into her own private hell.”

“And now you can be free of yours.”

Perhaps, but I did not yet feel free. My separation from my sister was my new yoke, the one I’d been anticipating.

Grace’s arms encircled my neck, and her weight began to burden my back. I sat in the chair by the fireplace with her still clinging to me, and kissed her hair, which smelled like winter.

“You okay, Gracie?” I asked.

“Mm-hmm,” she muttered into my neck.

I held her away from me and looked into her owl eyes.

“You’re safe,” I said. “Hoot.”

She giggled and pulled Dolly into her neck.

I looked up to where Gabriel stood watching us, wearing the strangest expression.

“Would you like to stay for lunch?” I asked.

He blinked as if under a spell, and then shook his head. “No. No, thank you. I should be going now. If you feel safe, that is.”

I nodded and smiled, hoping to give reassurance. He smiled back at us and paused before closing the door behind him.

After an hour, Grace was finally calm enough to climb out of my lap and pull Dolly around the shop in her sled. As I prepared a fire, the store bell rang. I was surprised to see Sissy. She held a large basket full of apples and oranges. Still reeling over the words in Father Ash’s diary and Sissy’s theft of it, I didn’t know how to welcome her into my shop. I was shocked that she would come in so soon after the scene in the street.

Her red-rimmed eyes confirmed that she had been crying. She carried the basket and placed it on the counter. Then she turned to me and wept. Grace saw her and became troubled. When she rushed to me to pick her up, Sissy flinched.

“To think I could have harmed you girls,” she said. She wiped her tears on the sleeves of her coat, irritating the skin on her red cheeks.

I walked over to a pile of handkerchiefs under the counter, picked one up, and handed it to her.

“Thank you. I do not deserve your kindness,” she said.

No, she didn’t, and I wished she’d leave, but I was aware that my daughter had witnessed many troubling exchanges, and must learn how to treat people. I stood straight.

“I brought you this fruit basket,” Sissy said. “I . . . I mean it as an apology. The beginning of an apology. I know it will take time.”

“Thank you, Sissy,” I said. “But perhaps you should take it to Father Ash. I believe he has been hurt worse than we have been.”

This caused her to cry harder. I waited for her outburst to subside.

“I can’t,” she said. “I just can’t. I’m so ashamed.”

“Confess it to him.”

She stopped crying and nodded her head, and silence grew around us.

Though I appreciated her gesture so soon after the trouble, I wished she would go. I was exhausted and did not wish to upset Grace any more. Mercifully, Sissy too seemed fatigued, and turned to leave. She muttered one more apology, and then shut the door.

I watched her walk home through the snow, slipping a bit on the road. Many people still lingered in town, talking in groups. They looked at the church, my shop, and down the street toward the hospital. I knew many of them would still judge me for my relationship with Daniel, but Sissy’s visit might represent a shift. A moving on. A welcoming.

This heartened me for a moment until I remembered the look of pain and anger on Marie’s face, the way she had clutched her belly and tried to flee from us. I thought I’d prepared myself for confronting her, but Agnes’ performance added so much confusion to my return that I found the rift with Marie infinitely more insurmountable. I didn’t know where to begin to build a bridge.

Marie’s anger weighed so heavily on me all day that by eight o’clock I knew I had to turn in once Grace was in bed.

“Stay,” Grace said, and I didn’t refuse. I curled myself around her and rubbed her arms until she slept soundly in my grasp. I waited for sleep, but it did not come. Only a hazy half-consciousness that confused me, and reminded me of how Marie and I had slept this way as children when one of us was scared. Before I knew it, I was crying, trying hard not to wake Grace with my shaking. Exhaustion stole over me, and I finally succumbed to sleep, but it felt as if not a minute had passed when I heard a knock on the back door.

My eyes refused to open, and I prayed that the knocking was a bad dream, but seconds later, it came again with more insistence. I didn’t want Grace to awaken and become further troubled, so I slid away from her as carefully as possible and crept down the stairs. I peered around the wall at the bottom of the staircase and looked at the back door’s window.

It was Daniel.

I didn’t think I should let him in—not because I felt a stirring in my heart, but because he did not deserve a chance to explain himself. He would not stop knocking, however, so I was forced to admit him.

“I’m sorry to come . . . so late.” The words hung between us.

He had dark circles under his eyes, disheveled hair, and trembling hands. I stepped aside and motioned to the table, where he sat so heavily, it was as if he did not possess the strength to remain upright.

After I closed the door, I heard a sound and saw Grace scooting down the stairs into the kitchen. Daniel looked at her with an expression of such pain that I was moved to pity. I lifted her into my arms and thought that he would never get to hold her like this.

“Hello, Grace,” he said, attempting to put lightness in his voice. She did not speak.

“Say hello,” I said. “Be polite to Dr. Dempsey.”

She shook her head and shoved her thumb in her mouth, burying her face in my neck.

“It’s all right,” he said. “She doesn’t know me.”

She doesn’t know me.

The words seemed to echo in the air. He was wretched, indeed. Then he sat up as if remembering that he had something to say.

“My secretary said you wanted to sew for the ward. For money. We get our linens now in bulk from a supplier, but our waiting room could use some new curtains and cloths for the end tables. How about it?”

My softened heart suddenly flared in anger.

Curtains? Cloths? To think that we stood here in this room, with this child between us, after all that had happened, talking of such things. My fury rose and my face burned. Without a word, I climbed the stairs, tucked in Grace, and instructed her to go to sleep. She whined a response, but the wild, dark look in my eyes quieted her complaints. Back in the kitchen I stepped toward Daniel, standing over him.

“How dare you come here and ask me to make curtains for your waiting room,” I said.

“Laura, I’m sorry. I wanted to see you.”

“Really? Now? Haven’t you seen me often enough?
Alone
, pushing my daughter in her pram.
Alone
, sledding with her on the hill.
Alone,
running into your wife at the library.
Alone
, in the back pew of the church while your mother-in-law throws spears at me with her eyes.
Alone
, in my window at night sewing so I can feed this child and keep her safe and warm.”

He had the nerve to allow his lips to quiver.

I pushed him with all my force. “Get out,” I said. “You’re too late.”

He grabbed my arms and knelt in front of me. “Please, Laura, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I want to help you. I love—”

I wrenched myself out of his grip. “Don’t you dare.”

He crumpled and buried his face in his hands. I was disgusted to see him like this.

“What would your wife say to see you? Your mother-in-law?”

“Darcy left. She went to stay with Agnes. My marriage is over.”

My fury began to scare me because I wished to do this man violence—this man who finally came to me because his wife had left him.

“There’s more,” he said. “Darcy wasn’t pregnant when we married.”

His words didn’t make sense to me. “Of course she was, until she lost the baby. But by then you’d married her.”

“She lied. She told me earlier tonight. She wanted to keep you and me apart.”

My mind raced. I thought of how Darcy had stolen our happiness, stolen a father from Grace’s life; forced me to live alone, scraping together funds and working for Millay in betrayal of my sister to make ends meet. I thought of how the love between Daniel and me had persisted even after his marriage, and how it had led me to disobey my father, which resulted in his death. I thought of what could have been, and put my face in my hands. Emotion came howling up and I pushed it down. Far down. It was the only way I could cope.

“I’m sorry to burden you now, but don’t you see?” he said. “It means we can finally be together. I can have my marriage annulled because of the lie that started it. We can move away. Grace will no longer be a bastard.”

I lifted my head upon hearing the horrible word he uttered about my daughter. The spell of regret was broken. Only anger remained.

“My daughter is no bastard, and damn you for saying that.”

“I mean, she’ll be legitimate.”

“She was
legitimate
the first day I knew she grew inside me. She was born of love—something that grew between us, separately, and continued even after you were too cowardly to face it. You are not worthy to
legitimize
her.”

I knew the man across from me was broken and sick. An emotional cancer plagued him, a true hatred of Darcy, which was actually of himself. As much as I wanted to hate Darcy, I felt a stab of pity for her. She had to pretend to be pregnant to hold on to a man who didn’t love her and who never would, and an unworthy man, at that. At least I had my daughter, and a chance at real love.

Daniel grabbed my hands.

“Please, Laura, don’t you see? We can be together. We can be a family!”

I was suddenly sick for the lost years—for the time I’d spent pining for him.

“Leave,” I said.

He stared at me in shock. He hadn’t expected this conversation to go as it had, and he had no retort. After a moment, he walked toward the door and paused there. “You are tired and need time to think. Think about it for me. And for Grace.”

It was astounding but I was still surprised by his selfishness. I thought of the angry fire burning in me. I imagined fighting it from the outside in until it was but a candle I could snuff. I knew that I must speak so he understood me, so that there was no spark of hope in him.

“Daniel, you have failed me in every way a man can. You are selfish beyond imagining. You left me alone with our daughter, and only come to me now when your marriage is over. I will not allow you to disrupt my life any longer. You are nothing to me.”

Daniel’s eyes looked as if they would bulge from his head. He made a move to the back door, but I stopped him.

“Wait.”

I ran upstairs and to my room to dig through my closet. Before long, I found the box holding the triple-stranded pearl necklace from our night at the Follies. I was glad I had never sold it because I wanted him to know that at no time had he ever had any part in supporting us. I carried it down to him and passed it over. He lifted the lid, and when he saw what was inside, he looked as if he would shatter.

I crossed the room and threw on the front lights, opened the door, and thrust him out. He stumbled down the stairs, but turned once more to me.

“I know there is nothing I can ever do to make up for these lost years,” he said. “Nothing. But please know that I put myself through torture every day. Every single day. Seeing you and your—
our—
beautiful daughter, and not being able to have either of you, it is hell.”

“A hell you created,” I said, suddenly calm. “It didn’t have to be this way.”

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

I noticed the moon and the stars in the sky, breathed the crisp winter air, and felt purified. I realized that I was not sorry.

Not at all.

•   •   •

M
arie would not see me. Everette told me as much at the door each day. He apologized, but there was nothing he could do.

I turned away, holding Grace’s mittened hand. She took great strides, crushing snowballs like a giant stepping on boulders, and we walked together up the stairs of the church. It was quiet and dark, with only the glow of votive candles and colored light filtered through stained glass. The aroma of incense lingered in the drapery folds. Lily Miller arranged flowers on the altar.

“Good morning,” she said. “You girls are up and about early today.”

“We know the choir has rehearsal this morning. We wanted to hear the pretty singing, and see how Agnes is doing.”

Lily stood up straight and widened her eyes.

“You are very kind to check on her,” she said. “She is resting under doctor’s orders for an indefinite period of time. She’s under a bit of nervous strain, I’m afraid, after her attack of apoplexy. There is danger she will suffer another.”

There was an awkward moment of silence until I spoke again. “Have you seen Father Ash? I wanted to speak to him too, after all that.”

Lily’s eyes welled with emotion, and she reached for my free hand. Her voice trembled. “You are good, Laura.”

I was embarrassed to feel my own tears, but I quickly blinked them away.

“The last I saw him, he was shoveling snow on the path to the cemetery,” she said. “I think he would be very glad to see you.”

I squeezed her hand and smiled. “Thank you.”

I led Grace to the back of the church and we exited onto the path. Father Ash stopped shoveling, and wiped his brow with a handkerchief. When he saw us, his expression changed from one of pleasure to panic. I willed myself to be courageous. We must talk openly if we were both to go on with our lives.

“Miss Kelley,” he stammered. “Grace. What a gift.”

“Good morning, Father,” I said, suddenly unsure of what I wanted to communicate.