Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger (20 page)

“So!” Robin stops by the newel post. “Aren’t there any ghost stories associated with this old house?”

S
OMETHING SNAPS INSIDE
L
YNN’S
head. “Why, yes,” she says. “As a matter of fact, we
do
have a ghost, because actually there was a terrible death right here.”

“Right
where
?” The ladies peer nervously about themselves. It’s getting dark outside, and it’s a little spooky in this hallway, even with the chandelier on. It’s always been dark in here. Lynn decides she’s going to paint the entire downstairs a sort of creamy eggshell color, brighten it up some.

“Right
there
!” She points to the dark at the top of the stairs. “Now here’s the story.”

They draw in closer.

“It was back in the nineteen twenties,” Lynn says, “when this house was owned by a very attractive couple awaiting the birth of their first child. The husband had been sent here to open a new bank, the Carolina Southern, right down the street there in that old stone building next to the pharmacy.” Everybody nods. Lynn continues, amazed at herself, “Nobody knew much about
this young husband — he seemed to have risen up out of nowhere, though he was perfectly charming and clearly very smart — but
she
came from one of the oldest and wealthiest families in Wilmington. He was a gambler and a spendthrift, though nobody knew it yet, and the new bank was in serious trouble when her mother — now, this is the wife’s mother, Mrs. Mildred Osgood, a widow, one of the Cape Fear Osgoods — came up from Wilmington to spend the Easter holiday and stay on for the birth of her first grandchild, as this daughter was her only child. So it was Easter Sunday, nineteen twenty-three, when the tragedy occurred.”

“What tragedy?” Mary Lane breathes.

“Well, the daughter was downstairs all ready for church — they belonged to the Episcopal church — but her husband and her mother were still upstairs dressing, and she was afraid they were going to be late, so she called up the staircase and begged them to hurry. Later, she could have bit off her tongue, because her mother appeared briefly at the top of these stairs and then tripped somehow, breaking her ankle, and fell all the way down this entire staircase, head over heels, landing in a crumpled heap right there.” Lynn points dramatically to the hooked rug at the bottom of the stairs. “She died instantly. And of course the young couple was just distraught, overcome with sorrow, and in fact they never got over it.”

“Never?” It’s Mary Lane again.

“No. Never. Because after the mother’s death, there was a presence in the house, a certain presence, you would feel someone beside you when no one was there, you would sense a presence in the room, and when she got old enough, the baby would smile at it, at the person who wasn’t there. So the young couple left, after a few years, but things did not go well for them. He died
in an automobile accident, drove his car off the bridge into the Neuse River, and she became an alcoholic back in Wilmington. She drank white wine all day long.”

“What happened to the child, then, their baby?”

“I don’t know,” Lynn says.

“Do
you
think he did it? The husband, I mean? Do you think he pushed her down the stairs, for the money?” Robin Atwater’s mind is just clicking away.

“It’s possible. I just don’t know. There are some things we can never know,” Lynn says.

A silence falls around them then, like snow. Down at the end of the front yard, the streetlights come on along Main Street.

“Have
you
ever felt that . . . that presence?” Angela asks softly.

“Oh yes,” Lynn says. “Many times.”

There’s an audible intake of breath, an involuntary drawing together.

“And I’ll tell you something else.” Now Lynn is getting reckless, she knows she’s going to blow it, but she can’t resist, she just
can’t.

“What?”
“When Mrs. Osgood fell down the staircase, she was wearing a
red hat
!”

Nobody says a word.

“Oh, you’re kidding, right? You just made that up,” Georgia Mayo says finally.

“Did you make it
all
up?” Mary Lane sounds very disappointed.

“I think that’s just
mean
!” Melissa Cheatham, in her walker, sounds like she’s going to cry.

“Well, girls, it’s getting late, I think we’d better be going on now.” Robin takes control again. “Thanks so much,” she says
briskly, extending her hand but pulling it back when Lynn has barely touched her long, sharp, manicured nails. “Quite entertaining, I must say! And now, good-bye, and Merry Christmas.” Robin shepherds them out the door. It’s drizzling now, getting dark. Lynn turns on the porch light and stands to watch as they straggle over to the side street, helping Melissa along, then moving in their group down the long hill, farther and farther away. Carolers are singing someplace nearby, their voices float out on the chilly air.

“Merry Christmas!” Lynn calls after the ladies. “Merry Christmas!” She watches them until they turn the corner and disappear, heading back down Main Street. Obviously they have decided to skip the Barkley School after all.

Now, finally, she’ll get that drink. Lynn laughs as she closes the door behind her and walks back down the long haunted hallway to grab the Pinot. She’s still smiling when she goes into the kitchen to open it and finds Lawrence sitting at the kitchen table, wearing his overcoat, going through the mail.

H
E LOOKS UP AT
her over the half-glasses, white hair floating out all around his head like a dandelion gone to seed. God, he’s aged, he looks really old now, like some character out of
Alice in Wonderland.
“Bravo, bravo!” He starts that slow deliberate sort of clapping he does which always drove Lynn mad. “Well done, well done, my dear! Very creative! I commend you.”

“You were here? You heard all that?”

“Ah yes, my dear, I had just come slinking home through the back door, appropriately enough, dragging my tail behind me.”

Lynn glances out into the back hall. She didn’t notice any luggage when she passed the broken dishwasher. No, his bag is not
there, it’s definitely not there. So what does this mean? Does he imagine that he has come home for good? Or is he just visiting? Lawrence stands up to take off the huge overcoat, which strikes Lynn now as an affectation, especially that capey thing, and the belt — why, it’s downright theatrical, really. Lawrence seems theatrical too, an old ham, a joke.

He says, “I especially liked the mother-in-law’s name, Mrs. Mildred Osgood, and that line, ‘one of the Cape Fear Osgoods.’ That was quite good, you know.”

Lynn had somehow forgotten about his deep, stupid voice-ofGod voice, which they all love so much on NPR. And that accent — almost English, isn’t it? Lawrence claims he got it at Harvard, but plenty of people who went to Harvard don’t sound like that, do they? She opens the bottle.

“And that detail about the baby smiling at the presence in the room, very nice. You should go back to writing fiction, you know. You really should. You’ve a gift for it.”

“I won’t, though. I have other plans,” Lynn hears herself saying.

“Well, what are they?” he asks. “Good works? Ha ha.” He does his harumphing laugh, he’s being ironic, of course.

“Perhaps.” Lynn gets herself a jelly jar from the sink and pours some wine into it. “If I ever do go back to writing, the first thing I’m going to write is a long epic poem titled ‘Irony Sucks.’ “

He raises those scraggly white eyebrows. “Aha! A manifesto? You
are
interesting, you know. You are still interesting.”

“Thank you.” Her ankle hurts. She walks over to sit down at the littered table.

Lawrence gets up, opens the china cabinet. “Bravo!” he says again. “In any case, bravo! You have vanquished the opposition.” He takes down one of those little green glasses they got in Venice,
actually at Murano, out in the lagoon, where there’d been some sort of a workingman’s organization holding a celebration, singing and dancing, arms linked, all of them singing and dancing as one. Lawrence and Lynn had stood up and joined them. Come to think of it, that might be as close as they ever got to feeling like part of something else, like part of a group. Usually, it had been the two of them against the world.

He fills the delicate green glass and lifts it. “To you, my dear.”

“To Deborah Woodley,” Lynn says instead, raising hers. “So, where is she?”

“Gone.” He lowers his glass. “Gone with the wind. Or so it would seem.”

Lynn lifts an eyebrow, sipping her wine.

“Yes,” he says. “I ‘brought her down,’ apparently. ‘You bring me down,’ is what she told me, to be precise. She is considerably younger than I, as you know. We had gone to a holiday party where she had a wonderful time, as usual, and I did
not,
again as usual. And on the way home in the car, she said she was tired of me bringing her down.”

“Just like that? What else did you say?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what else had you said — before that, I mean — to bring her down?”

“Oh, well, I suppose I had said something to the effect . . . oh yes, I remember now. I had remarked that I hate it whenever she has a good time.”

“And then
she
said . . .”

“And then she said she was tired of me bringing her down.”

“So here you are.”

“So here I am.”

Lynn starts laughing and can’t stop.

“What? What is it?” He leans forward frowning.

“Do you remember when we first moved to North Carolina?” she asked. “And I was working for the newspaper? And I had to write all those headlines and cutlines?”

“Yes . . .” He’s nodding his wispy white head.

“Well, I can just see the headline now,” she says. “Debbie Dumps Depressive”

Lawrence starts laughing too. “Oh, that’s good,” he says. “That’s rich, that’s really good. ‘Debbie Dumps Depressive,’ very nice.”

They are still laughing when Mary Lane Faucette, the snow lady, pokes her red hat around the back door. “Hello — oh!” she carols. And here comes Georgia Mayo smiling her bright red smile, advancing into the kitchen, with Rita Goins tap-tapping along right behind her on those ridiculous spike heels.

Oh God.
Will Lynn
never
be rid of these women? “You must be the husband,” Georgia says to Lawrence.

“In a manner of speaking.” Lawrence drains his glass and pours another.

“Well, pardon me,” Georgia says. Actually she looks like the Little Drummer Boy in that red blazer with all the gold jewelry. “Pardon me, but we just had to come back and make sure . . . That wasn’t really true, was it? That part about the mother-in-law falling down the staircase?”

“No,” Lynn says.

“I
told
you,” Rita says.

“Well, why did you say it, then?” Mary Lane’s feelings have obviously been hurt.

“I don’t know,” Lynn says.

“Ladies . . .” Lawrence begins, then pauses. “Ladies, pardon me.
But could you explain your attire to me, please? Are you members of a club? An organization?”

“Not really,” Rita says.

“We’re a
dis
organization,” Georgia explains. “The only rule is that you have to be over fifty. And basically we’re all tired of doing things for other people. We just want to have some fun. We’re releasing our inner child,” she adds.

Lawrence laughs, a short, abrupt bark.

Oh no,
Lynn is thinking. Now he will destroy them.

But instead, Lawrence says, “There are those who feel that my inner child has been released entirely too much already. In fact, it seems entirely possible that I am nothing but an old fool, an idiot.”

Lynn can feel him looking at her.

“Who are you, again?” Georgia asks him point-blank.

“I am no one.
No one,
” Lawrence intones in the voice-of-God voice.

“Are you really the husband?” she persists.

“In a manner of speaking.” Lawrence drains his glass, then pours another. He stands up.

Now,
Lynn is thinking. Now he will destroy them.

But instead, he makes a stagy little bow. “Ladies, please,” he says. “Please. Sit down. Have a drink.”

They look at each other.

“I don’t mind if we do,” Mary Lane says. “It was
hard,
getting back up that hill.” She sinks gratefully into the chair which Lawrence pulls out for her. Rita takes off her mink coat and does the same, while Georgia sits gingerly on the very edge of her chair, looking all around the messy kitchen.

Lawrence refills Lynn’s jelly jar, then pours each of them a little green glass of wine. “
Salut!
” he says. “To you!”

“Thank you.” Mary Lane Faucette seems shy, suddenly. She drains her glass. Then she clears her throat and says, “My son is gay too. He lives in Atlanta, and he’s just wonderful. He’s the sweetest thing. In fact, he has always been the light of my life . . . of all our lives, really. He was the only truly lighthearted one in our family. But my husband won’t accept it, he just can’t. At first I thought, Oh, he’ll come around, it’ll just take time, but he can’t. He just can’t. In fact, he won’t even talk about it. He won’t mention his name.”

“That’s rough,” Lawrence says. “Hard on you.”

Lynn stares at him. Who’s this? Sigmund Freud?

“It’s been hard for all of us,” Mary Lane says, “especially at Christmas. It’s especially sad for Libbie, that’s his twin sister, they used to be so close.”

“I would imagine that it’s harder on your husband than anybody else,” Lawrence says. “That’s how men are, we’ll hold on to an idea we can’t live with until it kills us.”

“Well, that’s just crazy!” Georgia Mayo says decisively, tipping her glass up to get the last bit.

“But people
are
crazy. Not just men.” Rita leans forward on the kitchen table, propping her pretty face up in her hands. “I mean, you never know what is going to happen in this world, do you? For instance, I used to be Miss South Carolina?” Her voice goes up at the end. “And now I have a double mastectomy? And my husband left right in the middle of all the chemo and radiation and everything, he just couldn’t take it? But guess what?”