Have Your Cake and Kill Him Too (36 page)

 
NORA: Those rose fanciers are fanatics. They have rules. We could find ourselves in very hot water.

 
LIBBY: You. You could find yourself in hot water. I don't live at the farm anymore.

 
NORA: (
unintelligible
.)

 
EMMA: Was Nathaniel the Blackbird who traveled with Teddy Roosevelt to the Amazon and disappeared?

 
NORA: No, that was George. I think he was eaten by a snake. Either that, or he faked his own death because his wife was so bossy. But before he met his end, he had time to send back a huge collection of dead bugs, which Grandad Blackbird finally donated to the Smithsonian. I don't think I could stand sleeping in the house if I knew all those beetles were still there.

 
LIBBY: The twins would love to see those bugs, I bet. I wonder if they could get a special pass to the Smithsonian because of George's donation.

 
EMMA: Meadowpond cornered me at the deli once. He started hinting around about Jeremiah Blackbird and those parlor maids of his.

 
NORA: Those were no parlor maids, Em.

 
EMMA: No (
expletive
)? What—Jerry was running some kind of house of ill repute?

NORA: Of course not! It was a school. A school for ladies. Ladies who wanted to expand their knowledge of—of human—

 
LIBBY: He was an early sex therapist. He was very popular. If you read the newspapers of his day, you'll see his name in all the social reports. He was welcomed into the best homes in the city where all the young, impressionable daughters flocked to his side. And he invited his conquests to visit Blackbird Farm, where things got very steamy. It was all very Victorian on the outside, but my goodness, he must have been masterful! I know where I get my sensual side!

 
EMMA: I'll be damned. How do you two know all this?

 
NORA: Jeremiah's diaries are in the family library. And Nathaniel kept accurate records of where he found all the flowers and trees he stole. He traveled all over North America, France and England stealing cuttings. Three from Balmoral alone.

 
EMMA: I thought all those dusty books were memoirs about building railroads or something.

 
LIBBY: You'd get quite an education reading some of the books there. Like Jenny Blackbird, the one who wrote poetry and had the affair with Thomas Jefferson
and
George Washington.

 
NORA: Good Lord, we can't talk about that either! Entire family trees might as well be chopped down if that story gets out! Not to mention—no, no, no. Libby, we can't go spilling family secrets now. If past Blackbird generations saw the necessity to keep the real author of the Declaration a secret, why should we question their decision?

 
LIBBY: It's hardly fair that she didn't get a little bit of credit. . . .

 
EMMA: I thought Jenny was the one who dressed up like a boy and went to fight with Washington after Valley Forge.

 
NORA: She got a lot farther than Valley Forge. She ended up in Paris.

LIBBY: Which explains all those French cookbooks in the library. And my ability to speak French,
mes filles
, since I totally believe past-life experiences have impacts on future generations. We should probably have those cookbooks appraised.

 
NORA: We're definitely not breathing a word about the Underground Railroad era. I refuse to believe most of it, anyway. A woman living in the attic for ten years without the lady of the house having a clue? And that skeleton they found in the basement at the turn of the century couldn't have been the missing man from South Carolina. I mean, if you came looking for runaway slaves, why would you wear a chain around your own neck?

 
LIBBY: I don't think he put it there himself, Nora. Who was it, if not him? Maybe the poor slob that Great-great Grandma chained up for beating a horse? Or maybe the Marquis de Lafayette's officer—the one a Blackbird cook supposedly held captive until he gave up all his recipes?

 
NORA: The one who left all his letters in a hollow tree. I looked for them when I was a little girl.

 
LIBBY: They'd be worth a fortune now.

 
EMMA: Here I thought Mama and Daddy were the first Blackbirds to raise a few eyebrows.

 
NORA: Not the first. Not the last.

 
LIBBY: Why are you looking at me like that?

 
EMMA: Okay, as long as we're telling tall family tales, what's the story with Daddy?

 
NORA: I really, really need some aspirin.

 
LIBBY: Daddy was totally discreet. Even Mama didn't know.

 
Emma: Didn't know what?

LIBBY: He atoned for it, anyway. Taking Mama on a world cruise makes up for all of his dalliances.

 
EMMA: Daddy dallied?

 
NORA: Even an Advil would help.

 
EMMA: With who?

 
LIBBY: Never mind. You're obviously unprepared to hear the truth. Me, I feel the same adventurous blood running in my own veins. Some people are not cut out to be monogamous, don't you think?

 
NORA: Bottom line, Libby, is that we can't talk to Mr. Meadowpond. We've been entrusted with a lot of family history. Secrets that could change American history, and not in a good way.

 
LIBBY: You're saying it's our patriotic duty to keep our mouths shut?

 
NORA: That's one way of thinking about it, yes. Another theory is that it's the only way to keep you out of Meadowpond's clutches.

 
LIBBY: His clutches seem rather attractive to me. I thought he'd call by now. . . .

 
EMMA: Am I going to get my massage or not?

 
LIBBY: Oh, for Pete's sake, this silly phone has been turned on the whole—

 
End transmission.

 
Mary Curry's Tea Cakes were Grandmama Blackbird's favorite treat. When she invited friends for an afternoon of bridge, she'd ask her cook, Mary Curry, to bake tea cakes while the ladies played . . . because the aroma of baking chocolate distracted everyone but Grandmama from the game. This simple recipe for a very rich, nearly flourless, brownielike cake makes just enough for four ladies, plus a few bites for Mary back in the kitchen. Small squares of the cake look very pretty on Royal Winton Chintz China plates with a sprinkle of confectioners' sugar, a few berries and a sprig of mint for garnish. Serve with cucumber sandwiches, strong tea and mixed nuts at 4 p.m.

 
Spread in 8 × 8 baking pan and bake for 22 minutes at 350 degrees. (Libby's electric oven requires 24 minutes.) Cake will be soft in the middle and may fall slightly. Tips: Mary sometimes mixed the batter directly in the baking pan! Allow to cool for a few minutes before cutting into squares and sprinkling with sifted confectioners' sugar. If no berries are in season, a few thawed frozen strawberry slices will do. (Libby serves the cake with vanilla ice cream, however. She also adds an extra tablespoon of cocoa to the batter for zing. Emma, who is allergic to walnuts, prefers the cake sans nuts.)

Everyone ought to be forgiven at least one mistake.

I gave my nephews Harcourt and Hilton a sum of birthday money I figured couldn't possibly buy anything that might endanger a pair of fourteen-year-old mad scientists. Unfortunately, I hadn't counted on them squirreling away cash for months, because as soon as they ripped open their cards and found the modest gift, they jumped on the Internet and purchased a fetal pig.

When their gruesome investment arrived—in a large carton packed with dry ice, bubble wrap and clearly marked BIOHAZARD—they rushed over to my house to set up their laboratory in my basement where they began the pig's long and loving dissection.

“They're weird, Aunt Nora,” said their sister, Lucy, already an astute judge of character at the age of six. She had wide blue eyes that saw the world clearly.

In complete agreement, I hugged Lucy and said, “Let's go to a party.”

Like all Blackbird women, Lucy had a few eccentricities of her own. She asked, “Can I take my sword?”

I hadn't been able to wrestle it away from her yet, and I didn't feel up to a battle. “Why not?” I said.

Lucy waved the foil. “If we meet any bad guys, I'll give 'em lead poisoning.”

When Lucy and I were suitably dressed and accessorized for an outdoorsy Saturday in April, we left the twins and their infant brother in the capable if slightly distracted custody of seventeen-year-old Rawlins, who was trying to teach himself Texas Hold 'em from a book. Lucy and I tiptoed outside to the waiting car and hit the road. In the car, she shared her Hello Kitty lip gloss with me.

Life had hit me with a few body blows in the last couple of months. A day with my niece felt like good medicine. Even if we were headed to a party celebrating death.

Eventually, we arrived at Eagle Glen, an estate owned by some elderly, eccentric cousins of ours and located in an expensively bucolic enclave outside Philadelphia where green pastures rolled from one exquisitely landscaped mansion to another. On the tallest hill, Eagle Glen commanded a river view. The neglected estate included a topiary garden with bushes as big as Macy's parade balloons and a green swimming pool full of three-legged frogs. The grass on the tennis court where Billie Jean King once beat the stuffing out of Richard Nixon looked like a wheat field.

Behind the tennis court lay the polo field, recently mowed for the party. The lower lawn, however, was an ocean of April mud, the result of poorly maintained drainage. Surrounded by a profusion of forsythia and waves of naturalized daffodils, it was mud nevertheless. Hundreds of luxury cars were swamped in it. A couple hundred well-dressed Philadelphians had unpacked elaborate picnics suitable for the first annual Penny Devine Memorial Polo Match. It was a pageant to behold.

Each party had a different theme. As Lucy and I picked our way across the swampy grass in our Wellies, we saw a Chippendale table laid with fine linens and silver under one pretty striped tent. Next to it, another hostess had thrown long boards over saw-horses for a barbecue. Champagne cooled in crystal buckets that sparkled in the sunshine, while barrels of cold beer appealed to other guests. One well-known socialite was treating her guests to a circus, complete with cotton candy, a clown on stilts, and an organ grinder with a monkey that fascinated my niece. The scents of chateaubriand and expensive perfumes mingled in the air with the fragrance of freshly churned up muck. The mud, in fact, seemed to be the only reason guests were sticking close to their vehicles. If the ground had made better footing, I was sure all the parties would have mingled into one spectacular bash.

Lucy pointed at a hired chef in a white coat and toque as he grilled shrimp over an apple wood fire. “Look, Aunt Nora. Is that Emerald?”

“I don't think so, Luce.”

At the next party, a violinist in tails entertained a party of blue bloods sitting in camp chairs beside a mud-spattered Bentley. They had wisely spread out a large blue plastic tarp on the wet ground, then laid a beautiful Persian rug on top of it. They raised their glasses to me and called my name.

Waving back, I thought that half of the city's so-called high society had decked themselves out in designer finery to come watch each other instead of polo.

The competition for Best Dressed was fierce. I spotted two women in Gauthier designs worth more than fifty thousand apiece. Lucy counted six gentlemen in ascots. And there was enough extravagant millinery to give the Queen a migraine.

My own choice received a rave review.

“I like your hat best, Aunt Nora. The long feathers look like a fairy's tail.”

I simply hoped the damn thing wasn't going to blow off and end up in a puddle. I had carefully unpacked the hat my grandmother wore in the Royal Enclosure the day Princess Diana stepped on her toe—presumably because Grandmama had outshone her.

“Hey, sis!”

Lucy and I turned to see my sister Emma emerge from a crowd of young men all dressed in matching bow ties—the members of the nearby university glee club. Emma, of course, wore no party dress or picture hat. Her white riding breeches clung to her like rain on pavement. In one hand, she carried a polo mallet, the shaft resting on her shoulder. In the other, she dangled a helmet by its strap, and her short, punk-style hair stood out in windblown tufts. Her loose polo shirt bore a large paper number on the back, but managed to hint at a figure that would have put Lara Croft to shame. The entire glee club ogled her butt as she walked away from them.

Tartly, I said, “Are those boys old enough to vote yet?”

“Maybe for Homecoming Queen. Think I have a shot?” As usual, my little sister had a gleam in her eye. “That's some chapeau you got going there, sis. How many peacocks died to make it happen?”

“None. They were cockatoos, and all volunteers.”

“I see you got my phone message about the mud.” She glanced at our boots, hardly a fashion statement, but definitely practical on a day like today.

“Yes, I owe you big.”

“Good. Then you can tell me all about your vacation. And”—she lowered her voice so Lucy couldn't hear—“don't skip any details, especially the sexy stuff.”