Lady (30 page)

"Trees are God's noblest race." Lady's face looked pallid in the shine of the streetlights, and though the cold should have put color in her cheeks, they were pale, her eyes smoky and encircled with a purplish cast. "Still, trees last, don't they? While we die quickly. Each of us."

"Look at all the Christmas lights," I said, trying to bring her out of her melancholy. But it was no use; her thoughts that night, for whatever reason, were on death.

"Jesse looks better this week, don't you think?" she asked in the child's tone she sometimes fell into. Yes, I said, he definitely looked better. "He's dying." No, I said. "He will not last the year." But I said Jesse was a tough nut, hard to crack. "Dying," she persisted; "and he's so patient about it."

We continued along the Green, and when we pulled into her drive, she started to get out, then drew me back against the seat and took my hand. "It's true that you'll be going away. Sooner than I could hope for, and one day there is something I should like you to know."

"About you?"

"Don't be a great booby, of course about me."

Aha -- the, as I thought, defunct Mr. Ott. "Is it a deep terrible secret?"

"All secrets are dark and terrible. It's the way of the world. They are like The Dream of a Welsh Rarebit Fiend.'"

"I think," I said, "I know something."

"Ah," she returned, with that mischievous look, "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." She laid my hand against her cheek and I could feel the cold through my mitten. "But it can wait. Come, we must make a merry Christmas. I'll send Lew and Harry out to help you unharness Colonel Blatchley's horse." She donned a mask of lightness, forcibly putting aside her earlier morbid thoughts, and went in, all gaiety, disappearing through the brightly lighted doorway when Elthea answered her ring, stamping her little boots on the mat, the sound of her laughter rising as she went to greet her guests.

The door closed behind her. The snow still came down. The horse clopped her hoofs in the drive, snorted, shivered. I did not know it then, but it was the end of all the Christmases of my childhood, for the closing of that door really marked the end of Lady Harleigh as I had known her. Later, when the party was the merriest, when all went with Christmas good cheer, when the presents had been opened and the fire was dying, we sneaked out through the kitchen, reappearing at the garlanded front door to sing "Good Night, Lady," and this time she did come out to hear, with tears and smiles, and was touched; but after that it was never the same, never could have been, for within months I had made my terrible discovery. And as Lady had told me, never is a long, long time.

Easter came and Jesse was still alive, was indeed a tough nut to crack. During that spring vacation, Lady engaged us to give the summerhouse a fresh coat of paint and we worked diligently in the warming April sun, with ladder, bucket, and brush. Dora Hornaday hung about as she so often did, spying on us from beside the gazing-globe, or sometimes from the loft of the carriage house where she liked to idle, staring out and hatching whatever hidden thoughts went on in that ill-shapen brain of hers. The weather was fair, the spring flowers were already up in the gardens, and Elthea would bring a plate of sandwiches and cups of soup out to us at lunchtime. Jesse, seated on the wicker chaise, watched from Lady's window as the work progressed, his gray face imprisoned behind the pane like an ancient tribal sage. Often, Dr. Brainard would stop by when he came home from the hospital, coming out back to see how the work went, then going in to see, in effect, how Jesse's heart went. "Old fellow's strong as an ox," he would say when he came down again, shaking his head in amazement, though I noted he always managed to say it in front of Elthea, as if to allay her fears at the threat of losing her husband. And he would call a hello to Dora, whose presence now was more or less regular, as she stationed herself in the carriage-house loft.

Once, when I came over with my Kodak to take pictures of the newly painted summerhouse, I saw Dora appear from the side door of the carriage house, having descended from her solitary aerie. I watched her circle the lawn warily until she stood by the gazing-globe, staring at her curved reflection.

"What's happening, Dora?"

She seemed not to hear, and I saw that her ears were plugged with large wads of cotton, part of the treatment that was being administered at the clinic Lady was sending her to. The doctors had determined that it was Dora's ear trouble that kept her in her continually half-realized, dreamy state. I clicked my shutter at her, and "Don't!" she said. When I lowered my camera, she leveled her look at me and said nothing more, and presently she disappeared.

Then, suddenly and from nowhere, the blows fell, one more calamitous than the last. Jesse had been taken to the hospital for more tests, and though Dr. Brainard's report was positive, when Jesse came home again both Elthea and Lady were more worried than ever. Dora stopped coming around altogether, and except for Lady's taking the Packard out on her various errands, there were few comings and goings across the Green. It was as if the house were holding its breath, waiting.

It was several weeks later. Heavy rains had set in, and it proved a wet spring. The water in the Cove was high, though never so high as the flood. I sloshed my way home from school in rain gear, ate a sandwich in the kitchen with Nancy, then went across the Green. I was working on a large model of the
Hindenburg
zeppelin, pinning the intricate maze of struts and crosspieces to a board for gluing. Having used every pin available from Ma's sewing box, I went to borrow some from Lady.

The carriage-house doors were open, the car gone; Lady and Elthea must have gone shopping. Jesse, I supposed, was resting. As usual, the kitchen door was unlatched, and I kicked off my rubber boots and padded in on my stocking feet. Lady had been baking; there were cake layers cooling on racks on the sideboard, and a bowl of frosting sat on the table. I had a lick, then went upstairs to find the tin box she kept her sewing things in. I found it beside her bedroom chaise. I began picking out what pins I could find, then put back the cover and dropped the pins into a paper cup I had brought along.

Outside, the rain had stopped, and the afternoon sun was gleaming palely through a rift in the cloudcast over Avalon across the river. The broad plane of the Cove shone brightly, and boats already launched for the summer bobbed in clusters at their buoys. In the distance, through the just-greening treetops, I could see clumps of smoke blossoming as the freight train came down from Hartford. I watched closely, wondering if someone would try to slow it. These days there was a new engineer, whose ire was easily aroused, and I could hear his whistle making querulous toots as the engine neared the crossing at the Rose Rock soda-pop works.

I left the sewing box on the floor and started out, glancing at Lady's dressing table. I remembered she kept an assortment of pins in the little pewter dish, and decided I might as well have those, too. I spilled the dish out on the runner, picked out the straight pins from the safety and hair pins, put them in the paper cup, and replaced the rest. Among them was the little steel key for Edward Harleigh's chifforobe, which I returned with the pins, put the cover on, then again started out.

They were there on the floor, just a part of them. I nearly missed them, except that my head was angled slightly down as I came around the bedpost. I stopped, stared. Something occurred; a thought, the merest. I dismissed it, or tried to, but then I felt a sort of panic, an enlarging sensation that expanded my stomach and made my knees buckle. I think I said something aloud. It was the numb, stricken feeling one gets, the slow-rising flood of realization, of fear, that sets the intestinal juices flowing, the adrenal glands secreting. My hand had closed on the paper cup of pins: without thinking, I crushed it; their points stung, pricked me. I dropped the cup, the pins spilled on the carpet. I stooped, not to pick them up, but to examine more closely my discovery.

Still I had not realized all of the truth. It was proof, but not enough. I wanted, desired more. I rushed to the dressing table, tipped over the pewter dish, spilled out the pins, and took the key. I unlocked the chifforobe. I felt the blood charging my neck, my cheeks, all of my head, as shame, fear, disgust, engulfed me. I wanted to vomit.

It couldn't be.

Yet it was.

I would not believe it.

Yet I had to.

Stopping my breath because I could not stop the sight of what I was looking at, I yanked out the drawers one by one from the bottom to the top, each only further illustrating the truth to me. As if needing more proof, I flung open the closet door and began pulling things on hangers from the pole, threw them out on the floor, dragged out hats and shoes and furs.

"What on earth --"

Panting, I wheeled at the sound of the voice. Lady Harleigh stood in the doorway. I hated the sight of her.

She looked about at the confusion of strewn things, the ransacked chifforobe. "Oh, my dear." A faint smile appeared at the corners of her mouth, a sad smile, the smile of things remembered -- or perhaps of things best forgotten.

"My dear," she said again, reaching out her hand to me. The bracelets slid on her wrist, and I stepped back against the bed, away from her, but still staring at her.

She came into the room and began closing the drawers one by one, and she locked the door with the little key, which she held in her hand. She eyed the things on the floor with a faint glance of distaste, then moved beside me at the bed. I stepped quickly away, but she only bent to pick up the slippers. She held them in her hands and, outraged, I saw with what affection her fingers stroked the needlepointed toes. Jesse Griffin's slippers, which I had seen sticking out from under the dust ruffle of the bed.

I stared, not at her but at the closed chifforobe, its inventoried contents vividly colorful: the stacks of starched shirts, striped in pink and white, the seven white collars, the violet suspenders, the undershirts and drawers, the little compartment of gold collar studs -- not Edward Harleigh's, but Jesse Griffin's things. I started to feel sick again.

"Pick up those pins, please." She moved to the chaise and sat looking out the window, the slippers on her lap. I could hear Elthea humming downstairs in the kitchen. I knelt and picked up the pins. My hand hurt where they had stuck me, but the pain seemed nothing to the pain in my chest.

"Will you come and sit?" I rose and she nodded toward the vanity bench. I moved to her but did not sit. Two steps away was close enough.

She began speaking. "Do you remember -- last spring? When we walked? By Paulus's pond? I told you then that you were old enough to understand some things, old enough at that moment. And so you were. As you are older now, you must understand more. Will you try?"

I refused to answer. I would never speak another word to her as long as I lived. I dug my fingers into the openwork of the crocheted spread that covered the bed where she slept with Jesse Griffin.

"It would be easy for me to say that Jesse's things were only moved in here since his illness. I will not say that, because it isn't true. His things have always been in this room, for almost twenty years, ever since he came. This is our room together. That is the truth of it. I would like to tell you why."

Still I refused to speak; didn't want to hear; hated the sound of her lightly modulated voice, as if she were preparing to recount the events of a summer vacation. She leaned back against the pillows, slightly averting her eyes as though better to search out her thoughts.

"Will you try to understand?"

I said nothing. The train whistle sounded distantly down the track. It sounded like a small, drawn-out cry. The room was utterly still.

"Will you try to understand?" she said again.

"
No
!" I craned my neck at her, jutting my jaw and letting the word rip out at her. I wanted to hurt her, as the wounded lover wants to hurt, to retaliate, to reject her thought of ever understanding, a renunciation of her entire person.

"You're not a child any longer, a little boy. I told you there were things you must understand about life and about people if you are ever to be happy. Things that are a part of life, and of people."

"Why?" I was the sassy boy, mocking her with the question; as if I or anyone could ever understand such a gross thing.

"Because if we love people we try to understand. Even when it's difficult We try to feel what they may be feeling, and think what they may be thinking. We try to know their pain." She was holding the slippers, her fingers absently stroking the toes. She was not aware that she was doing it; still it was a loathsome sight. She paused, then talked some more. "It's easy to pretend to an understanding, to run about giving sympathy, but unless it's realty, truly felt, it's wasted energy. I beg you --"

She did not entreat with her eyes, but gazed at the slippers in her hands with such caring, such devotion, such -- love. . . .

My fingers clenched at the bedspread, my arm shot out, pulling it away from the blanket, and I swept it to the floor.

"
He's a dirty nigger!
"

I shouted the words and though their sound died in the room their echo continued inside my head as I flung myself toward the door. "Nothing but a dirty nigger," I repeated. "
And you're nothing but a nigger-lover
!"

Jesse was standing in the doorway, blocking my passage. A little light glimmered in his dark eyes as he put his hands out to slow my onrush past him. I butted at him, trying to get by, but he kept me caged inside the room. I began flailing and kicking and batting at him. His arms came around my chest and he held me, lifting me from the floor. I saw Lady sitting on the chaise, saw Jesse's ransacked clothing yanked from the closet onto the floor, saw above me his dark chin with its dusting of talc, heard the growl in his throat,

"Easy, son, easy."

"Elthea's your wife!" I shouted, trying to free myself. I could feel his heart beating under my back.

"Let him go," Lady said, not rising from where she sat.