Seidel, Kathleen Gilles (25 page)

I've warned her about still waters so she doesn't expect Brother #1 to be the gasbag that #2 is.

What sad news about Willie Roselander. I shall write his parents.

Love,

Bix

"Read this one." Doug handed her another letter; the handwriting on it was more feminine, more dramatic than Bix's. "It's from Aunt Alicia. She wrote it right after marrying Uncle Charles."

York, England

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Ringling,

You must be spinning with questions. "Married Alicia," Charles telegraphs, "letter follows"... then he is ordered off and so the letter must come from this complete stranger who is now your daughter-in-law.

But a very happy stranger she is. I met Bix in Washington and knowing that I was headed here, he commanded me to find Charles as the one man who is a good head taller than me. He is that... and so much more. I am reeling, desperately, delightfully in love with him. He is such a peaceful person... so steady and calm, enduring daily danger with good humor. He's unlike anyone I have ever met... yet I feel like I've known him my whole life.

Like so many others, we are legally joined, only to be physically separated. His life on the base is so restricted and there are no quarters for wives (what a lovely word!) so I shall continue with the tour I am on. Please don't think Charles has hooked himself to an exotic dancer who struts about in feathers and undergarments... I wear a uniform and sit behind a piano. We are as respectable as people living out of duffle bags can be. I trust I will not discredit the name I'm so proud to bear.

Most sincerely yours, Alicia Ringling

"What a marvelous letter." Jill shook her head. "I would
die
if I had to write introducing myself to someone's parents. She was no dumb starlet, was she?"

"Hardly," Doug agreed. "Dad knew her... no, that doesn't cover it—Dad was in love with her. He had a mad crush on her. He was fourteen the summer they were filming and he's always said that he was moon-eyed the whole time. My grandparents were crazy about her too. Grandpa said she was sharp as a tack, this lovely creature who looked like she had the mind of an angel food cake, when she really had all the sturdy common sense of a kid from a Wisconsin dairy farm."

"I suppose that explains why Charles never married again."

"I suppose." Doug handed her the next letter. It was from Bix again.

Washington, D.C.

Dear Mother and Father,

Some very fine news. The newest Mrs. Ringling (Alicia, that is—this is not a coy way of announcing the creation of a Mrs. Bix) returns to the States next week. I got a note from her. She is routed through Washington and is so eager to meet the family that she is prepared to descend upon you
without an invitation.
Rather than allow her to inflict such a blot on herself, I invited her not only to eat Sunday dinner with the family, but to stay in Winchester for the duration of the war. I know that this is what you would have wanted me to do.

I imagine she will say yes to the food and no to the lodgings. She will probably go back to California until Charles returns. She has a contract with the studio that pays her more than the army pays me.

I'm being allowed time off when she comes so I'll escort her down. It seems overwhelmingly unfair that I should be bringing Charles's bride home, but among all my good fortune, surely the highest is having a brother who does not resent injustice.

Apparently Alicia is quite alone in the world so the idea of cousins, aunts, uncles, parents, and even gas-baggy brothers is a great joy to her.

Love,

Bix

"What nice letters." Jill looked up, hoping that Doug had more. But his hands were empty. "It makes me want to call them up and invite them to lunch."

"I know what you mean. They must have been fun. In fact, as a kid I always heard about Uncle Bix and Aunt Alicia, and I assumed that they were the ones married, not Charles and Alicia."

Jill could understand that. Bix and Alicia had obviously both been bright, articulate people while Charles had been quiet and steady.

She folded Bix's last letter and slipped it back into its envelope. Charles had been wrong when he said they were all playing themselves in the movie. He might well have been like Booth. Alicia's description of him in her letter seemed to confirm that. But Bix hadn't been Phillip, and Alicia hadn't been Mary Deas. She had been livelier, more teasing and witty than her movie role.

Charles had married Alicia. Ward had had a schoolboy crush on her. There had been one other Ringling brother, the middle one. He had sketched his sister-in-law's lovely face. Had her portrait sprung from the idle strokes of his pen or from some warmer stirring of his heart?

CHAPTER 11

Tuesday Jill went to group.

That was one of the rules of group; you went. You were charged for sessions whether or not you went. That financial pressure could be considerable incentive; in some cases therapy was the member's second greatest expense after his rent. The fee itself meant nothing to Jill, but she didn't want to appear careless about issues important to others. As a result, the financial incentive ended up working as powerfully on her as on anyone.

She also didn't like it when other people skipped—Cathy Cromartie, who traveled on business, was one of the worst offenders in this regard. The dynamics of the group changed when one person wasn't there. So, on this Tuesday, as every other one, Jill went to group.

She got up at six and left the motel twenty minutes later. She drove two hours to the airport, caught a nine a.M. flight to the coast which got her into LAX, with the time change, at 11:10. This gave her plenty of time to be in Westwood by one.

There wasn't a flight back east until ten thirty in the evening. So she stopped by the office and looked at the mail; went down to the trunk room of the Holmby
Court
where her clothes were stored and picked up her jodphurs; and had dinner with some friends. The red-eye returned her to Dulles very early Wednesday morning; she was back at the Best Western by nine. It had taken twenty-seven hours, and as she had flown first class and had been met at the airport by a car and driver, had cost something more than two thousand dollars, not counting the fee for the therapy session.

But as she followed Allison and her graceful little horse down a narrow, wooded bridle path later that afternoon, she knew that it had been worth it.

Young Allison did ride well. Jill noted her good seat and soft hands, how smooth her transitions were. Little logs occasionally blocked the sun-dappled paths; Allison and Belle took them with an easy fluidity.

Jill herself was not doing nearly as well. She had not been on a horse for more than a year, and it was unsettling. Dodger seemed wide between her legs; the movement of his muscles felt unfamiliar. Tomorrow her inner thighs would be sore, and she would be walking in short, jerky steps.

Ahead of her Belle lifted into an airy canter without Allison having done anything that Jill could see. The girl had thought "canter," and her horse had cantered. It was a mystical communion of human and animal soul, two creatures from different species working as one. Jill had once been able to ride like that. She had sometimes felt that her beloved Willow understood her better than any human.

Alert herd animal that he was, Dodger saw that Belle was cantering and stumbled into one himself, just as Jill was reminding herself to slide her leg back and close her calf muscle. That was how a rider signaled for a canter. But Jill was no rider, she was a passenger.

The shadowy bridle path broke open into a sunlit meadow of clover and thistle. The hazy blue mountains ringed the horizon. Jill drew abreast with Allison, ready to ask her about her teacher. Jill wanted to find the best dressage teacher in the valley and get herself back in shape. First thing tomorrow morning, she wanted to be in a ring, on a horse, being lunged for an hour. She wanted to ride again. She loved to ride. She was going to start again.

No. This was exactly why she had not been on a horse for more than a year. Horses were addictive; they could take over your life. Serious riders devoted themselves to honing a very narrow set of skills. Jill could do that. She could afford it. She could let riding organize her day; cultivating and polishing this physical skill could be her goal. Yet how was it any less self-indulgent a life than the ladies who lived for their clothes, their manicures, and their lunches?

But how wonderful to be on the back of a good horse. The meadow sloped down into a woodland; a soft breeze danced through the delicate leaves of the locusts, the soft needles of the white pines. The two horses were cantering along a thicket of mountain laurel; the flowers were a showy pink, the leaves pointed and glossy. Jill's hair flowed down her back, her shirt rippled against her ribs and breasts. It was coming back to her, the movement of horse and rider. Her body was remembering.

Why did it have to be a choice? Why couldn't she ride once a week? Just a trail ride, no lessons, no time in the ring, no goals. Could she do that? One trail ride a week. Or was that like the deals an alcoholic made with himself?
I'll just have one glass of champagne...
This was as delicious, as intoxicating, as champagne. Jill, her mother's daughter, had always assumed that it was as addictive.

Maybe not. She would know soon enough. And wasn't it better to make the mistake out here so she could run away from temptation if it proved too strong for her?

Suddenly the summer lay before her as sweeping and bright as this green meadow. She would spend the summer here, in the Valley, in this world where the air was soft and clean. On Tuesdays she would go to group. On Wednesday she would ride with Allison. The rest of the time she would explore her father's homeland. She would learn what it was like to live there. She would prowl the aisles of the grocery stores. What kinds of cheeses were sold? Was there enough demand for fresh veal? She would watch the mothers waiting to meet the school bus. She would read all the notices tacked to the wall of the hardware store. She would roam through the dusty racks at the used book store, finding out what people were reading and selling. She would go to the Baptists' Strawberry Festival and the volunteer fire department's Ice Cream Social. She would visit the needlework show at Belle Grove plantation, pick up a coffee mug at the Shenandoah Crafters show. She loved this, poking around the edges of other people's lives. She had adored it in Africa and Peru; she was certainly going to like it here.

How long she would stay, she didn't know. Perhaps only a week or so, maybe the whole summer, she wasn't going to worry about it. She would set up her own leisurely routine of silvery clear mornings and burnished afternoons, and as long as that routine felt right, she would stay. When it didn't, she would leave.

Back at the stable she and Allison wiped the sweat off the horses' saddle area and curried their coats, using combs and the small circular motion of polishing a car. Jill stepped inside the house to exchange a few pleasant words with Carolyn. Back at the motel she showered and changed. Then she set off to find Doug.

There was something so delicious about setting off to find someone. In California she would have never dreamed of meeting someone without very definite plans. People's schedules were too complex, traffic too difficult, gatherings too large. You could be at the same party with someone and still miss him. But she had a wonderful lilting feeling about this afternoon, about every afternoon in the Valley, that there was a magic in the light wind that made things work out sooner or later, and unlike Los Angeles, it didn't matter if it was later, because one thing that you had in the Valley, that no one ever had in California, was time.

There was no answer to her knock at Aunt Carrie's house. She guessed that if she turned the knob, the door would open, but she didn't want to be inside. The sun was still above the treeline, slanting on the flower beds at the side of the house. Jill swung herself over the porch railing, lightly dropping down onto the clover-studded grass, and followed the perfume of the flowers.

The blossoms of the early spring daffodils had withered to a transparent brown, but the Dutch iris and tulips were blazing, purples and blues, red and golden yellow. Low to the ground were a row of lilies of the valley while the still tightly furled gladiolus thrust up tall. It was an odd garden, its individual beauties arranged without grace, each flower planted in a straight row, more like a crop than a garden. Although not entirely abandoned, it was not well tended.

But the rich soil, the dark glacial loam, from which both the flowers and the surrounding weeds grew, had been in her family for more than two hundred years.

She heard a sound behind her and saw a shadow coming across the grass. It was Doug, just back from the hen house. He had a baseball cap on backwards, his T-shirt was marked with sweat, and his jeans were stiff where he had wiped his hands.

"Hello," he called out, belatedly pulling his cap off. "Did you have a nice ride? You look happy."

"I am. It was wonderful. And these, the flowers, they're beautiful."

"Aren't they, though? It's almost enough to make you forgive Aunt Carrie her taste in interior design. Randy's in the shower. There's only one, so I have to wait my turn. Can I get you a beer in the meantime? You can sit far away from me."

Jill laughed and followed him into the house. It was dim inside, the dusty Venetian blinds cutting off the Valley's lustrous sun. Jill felt the world constricting under the leaden press of Aunt Carrie's clutter, the yellowing recipes torn out of the newspaper, the faded plastic plants, the candy dishes full of rubber bands, paper clips, and pennies.

Jill hated clutter. It was a reaction, she knew, to her mother's compulsive accumulation of objects. But at least Melody's things were of superb quality and rigidly organized. Here, tucked between two brightly painted ceramic birds was a little stack of white envelopes preprinted for church contributions. It was a mess.

Doug handed her a beer. The neck of the bottle was cool, slightly damp. "Do you mind if we go back outside?" she asked.