Fallen Beauty (28 page)

“She wonders if the children are being kind to hers,” I said. “She thinks that her daughter is getting older before her very eyes.”

“Phase three: pain. Regret. Longing. That is the moment when I see her. What is she thinking that has caused the line to appear between her eyebrows? Her mouth turns down. Her eyes grow dark and shadowed.”

“Yes, regret. Wonder. Will it be all right with those who aren’t here? What have I done to make this separation, and how can I stitch it back together?”

He looked surprised that I’d said as much. I surprised myself, but it felt right. I needed to start making healthy connections with others, and honesty lay at the heart of that desire. Courage was important too.

I turned my concentration back to the moment. I was fascinated that it was no longer the eyes of the town watching, but the eyes of the sculptor. He read me like the weather. I felt the stirring begin again in my belly. I allowed this feeling to touch my face, to show him that I welcomed his attention.

His eyes narrowed and the side of his mouth lifted in a grin.

He knew.

•   •   •

T
here was a pleasant soreness in my legs from the skating we’d done all evening under the white lights hanging from the trees. I ran my hands along my thighs, massaging them as I sat in front of my fireplace at home. Then I stretched both legs, pointing and flexing my toes.

I thought of Gabriel’s hand in mine while we had tried not to fall on the frozen river, glove to glove, and imagined if it had been skin on skin. His hands would feel rough, callused. The hands of a workingman. My mind tried to take that further, to leap into the future, but I quieted it. I didn’t want to think too far ahead. I accepted this day for what it was, and I’d do the same with tomorrow.

I was barely conscious of picking up the book, and of what I sketched, but after a few moments, I was caught up with the creative spirit that hovered at that time of night, waiting to inhabit my fingers to fashion its designs. I drew a pair of soft leather gloves, lined in lamb’s wool. Hand-stitched. Men’s gloves to match a hat that I also drew. The hat was brown with a black band.

When I picked through my closet, I found an old brochure for the design school, but I slid it into the fire. I’d set my sights on the neglected amphitheater a short walk from home. I thought I could do what I enjoyed here, in my place of origin, where I wanted my daughter to grow in a happiness I thought I’d forever lost. Her good years here would balance my bad.

I would make dresses and cloaks for whomever I desired. I’d allow anyone who wished to use the front door. I would make plans for a theater company with Sam and Callie and the others.

I turned the page and allowed my imagination to roam new landscapes, landscapes of ceremony, of celebration. White tulle, lace overlay, or maybe satin? I jumped ahead in my mind again, but I couldn’t help it, so I gave in to the fantasy.

In spite of all the joys of the day, I had a small sadness in my heart. I missed Millay. I wanted to tell her what had happened to me, to the town, since that terrible afternoon. I knew she would welcome me. I decided to send her a letter asking if Grace and I might join her for lunch one day.

I grew tired, so I poked the logs, locked the front door, and began to climb the stairs. The sound of approaching footsteps stopped me. I didn’t want to open the door because I was afraid a visitor would destroy the fragile happiness taking root in my life, but somehow I sensed that I must.

•   •   •

D
r. Waters’ hands trembled on the teacup.

“Thank you,” he said. “I hate to bother you. Especially after all your . . . trouble.”

“It’s all right,” I said, eager for him to disclose why he had come. He took another sip of tea, however, and looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. I heard a car drive past out front, and the distant cry of an animal in the woods. Perhaps a bobcat. How strange it was to live between civilization and the wild. Dr. Waters cleared his throat, scattering my thoughts.

“I’m going to tell you some things,” he said. “These are patient secrets. It is wrong for me to tell you, but I’ve been thinking long and hard, and after what I saw that woman do to you and to this town, I realized you deserve to know. Maybe it will even bring you some peace.”

I widened my eyes and leaned forward on the table.

“Remember the night Grace was born and I told you she certainly wasn’t the first child in this town conceived and brought into this world out of wedlock?”

I nodded.

“Over the years I’ve delivered dozens. You know some of the women. While some hastily married to prevent scandal, most gave away the babies. I’m not here to expose all of them, but to tell you about one who may be of particular interest to you.”

I began to imagine the women he meant. In truth, I couldn’t, nor could I see what any of them had to do with me.

“I delivered one such child of Agnes Dwyer.”

I gasped and sat back in my chair, covering my mouth with my hand. He sipped his tea and continued.

“When she was a teenager, she fell for an actor—an out-of-towner—in a traveling theater group. He got her pregnant and left her heartbroken and alone. Her father wanted to disown her, but her mother begged, and her father conceded to let her stay as long as she remained hidden during the pregnancy, and gave the baby up for adoption once it was born.”

He stopped to finish his tea while I tried to make sense of his story. I still couldn’t believe he was speaking of Agnes.

“It was a black time for her, and I worried she’d do herself harm, but she made it through in secret. No small feat for a socialite about town. Her parents told the world she was abroad with an aunt and kept her tucked away at a house they owned in Austerlitz. I attended to her health and eventually the birth. It was a boy, and she put up a terrible crying fight after he came, but her father got his way.”

I let Dr. Waters’ words sink in, and I was shocked at my compassion for Agnes. I couldn’t imagine being forced to give up Grace. What if I had lost not only my lover, but also my girl? What kind of person would I have become?

Dr. Waters stood and put on his hat. “Please keep this between us.”

“Of course,” I said.

I opened the back door for him. He passed me to go outside, and at the bottom of the staircase turned to wish me good night.

“Doctor,” I said, “thank you for telling me. Knowing it helps me . . . understand.”

He nodded, and opened his mouth as if he wanted to say more, but the moment passed and he started off down the path. I watched him until the night folded in behind him.

•   •   •

VINCENT

K
nowing death was coming did nothing to lessen its blow.

For a while I’ve known deep in my soul’s roots that Mother was dying. She kept speaking of the mountain laurel we’d brought with too much enthusiasm, too much gratitude for so small a thing. She wrote with a weak hand, making no effort to align her words or disguise the truth that she might not live long enough to see the spring.

Oh, her body will see spring, because it will be the very food on which the blind worms feed to enrich the soil. The laurels will bloom from her very hands. Her stomach. Her eyes. She will feel the vibration of the rain on the earth above her, and how it will decompose her bed and her body until she is one with the earth. And she will be in my earth, here at Steepletop, with me for as long as I take my breath. How I wish that I could curl up with her, deep inside the belly of the place where we will bury her.

They are coming. The dogs, Alstair and Ghost Writer, have been circling me and my sister Norma. Our other sister is across the ocean in Paris with her husband, begging us to conjure her and give her love to Mother. Norma’s husband, Charlie, is here with us and the hired men. I wish Laura could be at my side, but she cannot make it in the terrible snow that has fallen. She has sent a scarf patterned in small harps, honoring the harp weaver. I do not know if it is intended for me or for Mother, so I wrap Mother in it to keep her warm.

I follow the dogs to the front door and open it to the night. She reaches in her cold fingers and steals my breath as the sleigh approaches. I feel as if I am in a tomb, hit with this savage chill, this pure silence. As they come closer, bearing the coffin, I see the breath of the horses, the swinging lanterns, my husband, who has just lost his own mother across the ocean, tall and dignified, honored to escort my mother here for a final time.

He pulls up to the house and our hired men and Charlie carry the coffin inside to lay my mother out in the front room, where dear, dark Sappho will watch over her when my eyes are too heavy to do so. We will bury her on the east side of the property, with the laurels.

While the men begin preparations for the burial, we sit at the coffin’s side and sing songs like we used to when we were three young girls with our mother, alone in the warm cocoon of our home at the shore, where the miserable stink of death had not yet reached us.

•   •   •

N
orma and I are half-mad with grief.

We have been with her body for four days, while each hour is announced with explosions. It is as if we are in a winter war zone. It is Argonne and the enemy is attacking in the hard, cold snow. But it is not an enemy. It is Eugen and the men, blasting the rock in the laurel grove where we must put her body. She must go there in the grove, but the damned mountains’ roots reach so far through the hills that only dynamite can hollow her cavern.

Boom.

Norma and I flinch. I return to the piano and play another song. We drink another glass of champagne and tell another story. I want Laura. I want George. I want Kathleen to get on a boat and come home.

Eugen tells me to sleep. Charlie tells Norma. They don’t understand that we cannot leave her or she will die for real—a soul’s death from abandonment.

We’ve left her alone too much as it is. While she lived and complained of stomach pains, we allowed the acid in her to dissolve her from the inside out instead of helping her. We thought that she, a nurse, would seek her own medical help. Now she is dead. She will be cold in the winter rock, alone, a mile away from the house. I wonder if her grave should be closer.

Eugen looks at me with some new emotion I do not like.

“She will be buried where we blasted,” he says.

•   •   •

I
pull on my riding boots. My leather coat. My cap.

I take my coat off again, and slip on the purple robe. This is a procession. She is royalty, my mother. I must attend her as such.

I pull the coat back over my robe and grab my gun. Norma carries the gladiolas Eugene O’Neill sent. Charlie has a lantern. Eugen, a bottle of champagne.

I am coming undone.

We hike the mile across a path the men have dug. They have dug for two days through ten feet of snowdrifts. They have blasted the mountain so we could tuck our mother in it.

When we arrive at the grave, I am nearly broken. This place is stark and cold. It is lonely and strewn with burned rubble. We cannot leave her here.

I start to say as much, but I am silenced. I think it is Eugen who silences me, but it is actually the large and dreadful presence of some
thing
that is not of us. I am almost mute.

The men lift her coffin from the sleigh. Norma covers Mother with a blanket of yellow roses. The men lower her into the ground.

I find my voice in a hymn we used to sing. “Lead, Kindly Light.”

Then I lift my gun and fire.

Once.

Twice.

Three times for Mother.

I pass the gun to Eugen.

He fires thrice for his own mother.

How I wish to be a bird circling high overhead so he could put a bullet through my heart.

LAURA

Before Father Ash left Chatham, I brought him a new hand-stitched stole, and Grace drew him a picture of the “statue of Grace,” as she called it. Gabriel and several others joined us to wave him off as he boarded the southbound train. Father Ash promised to come for a visit in the summer for the blueberry festival. I tried to tell him with my eyes how much he meant to me, and that I wished him well. His leaving filled me with great sadness, and I was still in the grip of the melancholy and my confusion over my feelings toward Agnes after Dr. Waters’ confession.

I spent the next nights in a state, in and out of sleep, plagued by nightmares of my father, Agnes, Daniel. I questioned that I had turned Daniel away—denying Grace a father—and wished desperately that I could talk to someone about it. I considered Gabriel, but at this beautiful, fragile place of beginning in our relationship, I could not introduce doubt. I wished I could lie nose to nose with my sister and talk it out with her, but she was rightfully consumed with little James.

As dawn snuck into my room, I turned to look out the window I had not bothered to cover, and saw the steeple of the church illuminated by the sun. I watched as the light moved over it and knew what I must do. After I dressed and made breakfast for Grace, I took her hand and crossed the street to the church.

Our new pastor, Father O’Leary, was much older than Father Ash, with a stiff countenance, lines around his eyes and mouth, and thinning gray-blond hair. Everyone said he came with the highest praise from his last church, but I didn’t yet know him outside of polite greetings after Mass.

I instructed Grace to sit quietly with Dolly, and entered the confessional. I felt that gripping fear, like standing on top of the falls, knowing I’d have to jump. How could I ask a priest if I’d done the right thing by denying my daughter a true father? How could I ever forgive Agnes for trying to have Grace taken from me?

After his greeting, I took a deep breath and began telling him everything. I had a sensation like hovering outside of myself, separate from what I said, and dreaded the moment when my body and mind would reunite to face judgment. When I finished, he was quiet for a short time. I felt disoriented from my conflicting emotions. He began to speak in a voice gentler than I would have imagined.

“My child, calm your troubled heart.”

I looked up through the screen, wondering if I’d heard him correctly.

“The chance you had with that man is over. He is married to another, and if he gets a divorce, Church law would prohibit him from remarrying. You have confessed your earlier sin of lying with him before marriage and when he was with another, yes?”

“I have.”

“Then you are absolved from that. Your duty is to your child and her best interests, and it seems that marrying that man would not be in her best interests.”

I was moved by grace.

“There is healing of our souls in suffering, though it is hard to understand when we walk those valleys. You have suffered these years, but have faith and allow your future to give you a chance at joy. God wants that for us.”

My tears began and I felt a great release.

“As for the woman who hurt you, who wanted your daughter taken away, please pray for her, as the Son prayed for those who persecuted Him. When you pray for your enemies, you see them as God sees them—with all of the pain and heartbreak that have made them what they are. She has a wound from where her child was torn from her, and when she sees you with your daughter, that wound bleeds.”

He raised his hand to the screen and asked me to place mine on his. Then he raised his other hand and said a blessing over me.

“For your penance, go to the statue of Our Lady. Pray for your daughter’s father’s soul, and for that of his estranged wife and her mother. Ask for guidance in raising your daughter, and pray for all those whose suffering is so great that they lose their senses.”

We concluded, and I pulled a handkerchief out of my purse to wipe my eyes before leaving the confessional. I thanked him, and stepped out to see my girl waiting in the colored light of the stained glass like a benediction.

•   •   •

D
inner with Gabriel that night was charged with more undercurrents than the Stony Kill.

I had seen him in the street after leaving the church earlier that day, and blurted an invitation before I knew what came over me. He did not hesitate to say yes. He brought a bag of caramels for Grace from the Candy Kitchen.

All through dinner we played an unspoken game with each other: How many ways could our touch seem accidental yet have purpose? How could we communicate to the other without looking in the other’s eyes?

Our knuckles met when we both reached for the butter, and we waited to pull them apart while laughing at Grace’s silly chattering about how happy she and Dolly were to be wearing matching pajamas at the dinner table.

“Salt, please,” Gabriel said.

I rested my face on my hand and answered one of Grace’s queries about why the grown-ups weren’t wearing pajamas while passing the shaker to Gabriel. When he touched it, I didn’t let go. His laugh was for me but Grace thought it was for her, and in a way, it was. The slow weaving of our lives together would benefit her.

The dance continued through dinner until Gabriel made the boldest move. We sat across from each other at the table, and he slouched down a bit until our knees met. Then he arranged his legs between mine, and I couldn’t help but look at him with heat burning up my neck.

“I need water,” I said. “Ice-cold.”

“Gracie,” he said, “your mama’s burning up. She needs cold water.”

“On fire?” said Grace, with some alarm.

“No, silly Gabriel,” I said. “Just thirsty.”

Grace pushed her glass to me and I took a long drink.

Gabriel suddenly stood. “Clean or read?” he asked me.

“Clean.”

Gabriel carried Grace to the fireside while I cleared the dinner dishes. She nestled into his large lap with Dolly, and he read to her from her library books. While I washed the dishes, I could hear his deep voice and her high laughter from the other room. Before I knew it, and without fully understanding why, I wept. I stifled my cries so they couldn’t hear me, choking down my own emotion. I collected myself, and a few minutes passed before I felt his hands on my shoulders, and heard his voice in my ear.

“You deserve this,” he said. “And more.”

He reached for the towel and I turned to him. He lifted the cloth to my eyes, and then rubbed my sudsy hands dry. I tried to laugh and apologize, but he shook his head.

“It’s all right.”

He moved to embrace me, when we heard glass shatter in the front room. We ran to check on Grace. She was crying, and my parents’ oval wedding picture was facedown on the floor. I rushed to see if she was all right, and asked her what happened.

“I try to reach it.”

I saw that she had pulled a footstool in front of the mantel, and I was in a fresh panic over what could have happened if she’d fallen into the fire.

“Never do that!” I said. “You could have gotten hurt.”

“I want to show you,” she said.

“Show me what?”

“I want you to be like that.”

I stared at her for a moment until I realized that Grace wished I was married. I was speechless because I thought she was too young to understand such things. I caught Gabriel’s eye, and saw that he understood.

With such an idea taking up the room, it was hard to call myself to action to clean up the glass, and I decided instead to take Grace to bed. I started to walk her up the stairs, but she twisted and wiggled out of my grasp, and ran to Gabriel.

“You do it,” she said to him.

He looked at me, helpless, and I nodded, and gave her a kiss on her forehead.

I returned to where the picture had fallen, and saw that the frame was destroyed. Careful not to damage the photograph, I removed each piece of glass and wood, and placed them in the wastebasket. When I reached the wedding picture, I saw the date December 3, 1907, written in my mother’s hand on the back, and flipped the photograph over to look at my parents. I brushed off some of the smaller fragments of glass and noticed how much I resembled my mother. This thought comforted me, as did my father’s likeness. How I wished they were still here to meet their grandchildren.

I placed the picture on my sewing table and had turned to fetch a broom and dustpan from the closet when I was shocked still.

December 3, 1907.

I was born in 1908 on May twenty-first. My parents were married five months before my birth. I was so shaken, I had to sit down. Dr. Waters’ words about how he’d dealt with cases like mine didn’t apply just to Agnes, but also to my parents. They must have fled their hometown, gotten married, and started over here.

It was a strange progress of emotions marching through me as Gabriel joined me by the fire.

“She’s in bed,” he said.

“My mother was carrying me when she and my father married.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s true. Look at the date.” I passed him the photograph and he read it aloud. “My birthday is five months later.”

“You’re only just learning this?”

I nodded, still dumbfounded.

“Does it upset you?”

It took a moment for coherence to disperse my confusion, but I shook my head. “No.”

I gazed into the darkness outside, thinking of Agnes. I thought of how much she had given up in her life and of how desperately she’d wanted love.

“Gabriel, can you stay here with Grace while I run an errand?”

He nodded, and I pulled on my coat and left the shop, heading toward Kinderhook Street.

•   •   •

I
saw what must have been Agnes’ silhouette in the window. She was a dark form in an upstairs room blazing with light.

I forced myself up the path to her front door, though I wanted to run in the other direction, but like that night at the Follies, I was full of energy that compelled me onward.

A young woman answered the door, clearly a maid by her dress.

“May I see Mrs. Dwyer?” I asked.

“Is she expecting you?”

“No. I . . . I just need to speak to her.”

The young woman frowned and looked me over before allowing me into the foyer. “May I have your name?”

I hesitated, almost certain Agnes would not see me. I half-hoped she’d turn me away so I could at least know I’d tried. “Laura Kelley.”

The woman’s eyes widened. My name meant something to her.

“Wait here.” She hurried up the staircase, which turned at a landing before rising higher.

I gazed with awe over the foyer and the rooms that lined it. Every surface gleamed: polished wood floors, marble fireplaces, golden lettering on book spines, glass-covered photographs of her family that led to painted portraits of ancestors. I noticed a space next to Agnes’ wedding picture, where only a nail jutted from the wall. I thought I knew what used to hang there.

The piano in Agnes’ front parlor reminded me of the one in Millay’s home. I had a sudden thought of Millay, inebriated and in misery following her mother’s death, and resolved to visit her as soon as possible, before she began traveling for her reading tour.

The maid returned, jittery as a loose electrical wire. I imagined that she couldn’t wait to tell her fellow servants who had come to visit their employer.

“She’ll see you.”

I was surprised to hear it, but stood straight and followed her up the stairs.

The second floor was carpeted and the walls were lined in pale, cool rococo rose wallpaper with a coordinating frieze border. The vases, curtains, and bedspreads were heavily floral with competing patterns, and I couldn’t help but wonder if my mother had sewn any of the drapes and bedding. As we approached the large, carved maple doors at the end of the hall, my palms began to sweat. We passed a bouquet of dying flowers, and the combination of the foul water in the vase and the antiseptic smell in the air made me nauseous. The maid opened the door at the end of the hall with some drama, and stood aside to admit me.

Agnes sat in a wheelchair at the window, her back to me. Her view encompassed a number of houses and the Methodist church on Kinderhook Street, but didn’t quite reach the center of town.

As the maid closed the doors, I stared at the woman who hated me. I was struck by how her hair hung limp, thin and steely gray in a short cut. What had happened to her glorious crown of white?

Then I saw it, just inside the white marble bathroom on the vanity: a wig on a stand.

I was horror-struck.

“Why are you here?” she asked. Her voice was small and trembled, so different from when it had projected over the crowd from the church steps.

My shock made me unable to respond at first, but I forced my gaze from the wig back to Agnes. I offered a silent prayer that I might find the right words.

“I wanted to inquire after your health,” I said.

Her bitter laugh was followed by silence.

I continued. “And I want to tell you that I . . . I hope you’ll return to Our Lady of Grace soon.”

“You are quite the saint, Miss Kelley,” she said, her voice flat. “I have no wish to reenter the society of a town like this. What it has become.”

I realized this was a fool’s errand, but I ignored her words and continued. “The choir isn’t the same without you. And our new priest is very kind.”

Her bony fingers gripped the wheelchair, her hands like claws. “You know,” she said, “I think I always sensed the truth about you and Daniel. It’s one of the reasons I loathed you. One of them . . .”

Knowing the other reason was what kept me calm.

“I understand,” I said. “I do hope that, over time, you’ll be able to forgive me. And I will pray for you so that I’m able to do the same.”

I waited for her reply, but she said nothing, so I turned and opened the doors to leave. I paused once more to look back at Agnes. She placed her face in her hands. I had an urge to go to her, but I knew that it would not be a comfort, at least not now.

As I walked home, I touched the hem of the dress of the statue, and felt lighter. Unburdened. Renewed.