Stella Bain (22 page)

Nicky colored but answered, “No, sir,” without much hesitation.

The judge smiled. “Do you both understand that your mother intends to go away to England to find a doctor who will help her get better?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Clara responded.

The judge nodded. “You do not need to address me so formally in here,” he said gently to Clara. “Here I am simply Mr. Kornitzer.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, turning to look at her mother.

“And you understand the length of time she will be away.”

“One month,” Nicky said. Observing her son, Etna thought that no back had ever been straighter against a chair.

“Well, I think we will have to give her six weeks. She must get there and back. Mrs. Van Tassel, you do understand that you may not leave before the children have returned to their separate schools and that you must show Mr. Hastings here that you have a return ticket?”

“Yes, I do.”

The judge leaned back in his leather chair and took in Etna and her children. “You are quite an unusual family,” he said and paused. “But not an altogether impossible one.”

As she rounds a corner, mulling over that conversation, Etna sees the man she has not set eyes upon since early February of 1917.

“Etna.”

Once, she heard her name spoken and it brought back her memory. Today, it brings a strong desire to embrace the man in front of her on the path, and she does so.

He holds her for a long time. She has missed his scent: laundry starch and soap.

Awkwardly, they break apart. She studies his face. He is clean-shaven, and his hair has been cut shorter, but the navy eyes behind the silver spectacles are precisely as she has recalled them.

“August,” she says for the first time.

“I thought you might be out here,” he replies. “You, like me, would have arrived early, I reasoned. And I was right. Are you cold?”

“No, no, I’m fine.” She feels as though she knows this man well, and yet really she knows nothing of his life since she last saw him. Except for one fact.

“I am so sorry about Lily.”

He nods. “She was too young.”

“And how is the boy?”

“He’s a handful,” August says with a smile. “A joy, really. You shall see him in a minute. Let’s head toward the house. Streeter is eager to greet you again.”

Iris would have been let go, Stella thinks, since there was no longer a mistress to care for.

August holds out his elbow, and Etna takes his arm. She remembers that his stride is longer than hers. Silently, they compromise so that they can easily walk together.

Streeter, who must have been waiting at the door for them, opens it before they have mounted the first step. The man does not smile, never smiles because of his bad teeth, but she can see his welcome in his eyes. He bows. “Mrs. Van Tassel,” he says.

“I should very much like to be Etna. You’ll forgive me, but I am an American, after all.”

“I am happy to see you again,” Streeter says.

“And I you,” Etna answers.

“Streeter, bring us tea, if you would,” says Dr. Bridge. “And then fetch Sebastian. I know Etna would like to meet him.”

Etna follows August into the morning room, not much changed since she saw it last: the same red tiles of the fireplace surround; the tulip chandelier. She sits on the red silk settee and recalls vividly the first time she entered the room, she in her filthy VAD uniform, Lily in her rose-colored suit.

“I’m remembering Lily,” Etna says when August has taken a chair across from Etna.

“It was a difficult birth, a brutal birth,” he says. “We found out shortly after you left that she had a condition called placenta previa. Perhaps you know of it?”

“With my Latin, I can guess. The placenta blocks the birth canal?”

“Precisely. She had to be put to bed. Knowing Lily, you can imagine how she chafed at this prohibition. I tried to amuse her in any way I could, and I almost always took my meals in her room. At the moment of crisis, I was sleeping in a spare room close to hers. Because of Lily’s condition, the plan was to take the baby by cesarean two weeks before her labor was due to begin. Indeed, she was to be moved to hospital that morning. We had hired a midwife who lived in, but she slept upstairs. I was the first to hear Lily moaning. It was already nine o’clock, and I never oversleep. I see that fact as just one more part of God’s diabolical plan.”

He pauses. Etna wants to cover his hand, but he is too far away.

“By the time I got to the room, it was nearly over. Lily had gone into labor a half hour earlier. When the placenta finally ruptured, she died within minutes.”

“Oh, August. How awful.” Etna briefly closes her eyes. “How did you save the child?”

“I grabbed a knife and performed the cesarean myself. I had to do this while she was still alive, though unconscious. It was…” He shakes his head, as if to throw off the memory.

“Oh, my dear.”

“It was what she wanted,” he says. “I had to do it. I saw no purpose in losing both of them.”

As if to buttress the necessary deeds of that morning, a young woman arrives with a toddler in tow at the same time Streeter comes in with the tea.

August stands. “Etna, may I introduce Lucille, our nanny, and my son, Sebastian Cornelius Bridge.”

“Such a long name for such a little boy,” Etna says, standing and bending to the child. She smiles. He has Lily’s blond hair, but that is all of Lily Etna can see in him. “I am from America,” she says. “Do you know where America is?”

Sebastian nods, pauses, and then shakes his head. “I have a little boy, too,” she adds. “Well,
you
might think he was a big boy.”

The child runs to his father, who swoops him up and holds him over his head, then gently sets him down. “Well, I’m not going to be able to do
that
much longer. You’re growing too big,” he says to his son and takes him on his lap. The nanny stands at a distance.

“Has he had his lunch?” August asks.

“Not yet,” Lucille says.

“Oh, too bad, I was going to spoil him with one of these scones.”

“Oh, I think he would not mind a scone, sir.”

Etna thinks how unlucky and lucky this household has been. The boy is a treasure, a gift. She has never seen August so comfortable in his surroundings.

“You look criminally healthy,” August says when they are alone.

“I have been too well fed.”

“Nonsense. Your time in America has allowed you to become the woman you were meant to be. How are your children?”

Etna takes a long breath and lets it out. “It hasn’t been easy, August. I’ve had to fight hard for our current arrangements, which, as you know, are not perfect.” Etna removes from her handbag two photographs, both professionally posed. In one, a young woman with the shape of Etna’s face and her mouth gazes at the viewer, a slight smile on her lips. Nicky, in his, stands ramrod straight in his school uniform and smiles the way boys do when they have been told to—that is, with a rigid, teeth-baring grin. The picture makes August laugh.

“He can smile naturally when no one is paying attention,” Etna says. “But somehow he thinks more is expected of him when his picture is being taken.”

“Your daughter is lovely,” August says. “I see a lot of you in her. The mouth, the chin.”

“Yes, she has begun to look more and more like me, despite the contrast in our coloring.”

“Your son will lose his extra weight when he reaches puberty,” August reassures her.

“I fear he may have inherited his father’s build.”

“He’s your child as well,” August points out. “I expect him to be quite tall. Does he have large feet?”

“Yes,” she says. “Too big for his body.”

“There’s your proof, then. He’ll grow into his feet.”

“What a funny concept.”

“True, nevertheless. You’re very lucky, Etna.”

“Yes, I know. Now that Clara has moved north, it’s much easier to be together. She and I have become quite close. I see her every week.”

Etna describes her useless sessions with Dr. Little.

“I’ve made an appointment for you to visit Richard Parkhurst the day after tomorrow,” August explains. “When I heard you would be here for such a short stay, he and I agreed that there was no time to lose.”

“I know that the ‘cure’ to my last ailment lies here, not in America. If it did lie there, I am certain I would be done with it. In fact, during the last several months, the pains in my legs have increased in frequency, not decreased.”

“I once learned not to dismiss your hunches.”

Etna laughs.

“You’re the same and not the same,” he says.

“I was someone else. Do you ever think about her?”

“Yes, I do. Often.”

“Tell me about you.”

He sets his teacup down. “Well,” he says, picking off an imaginary piece of lint from his trousers, “I’m in the midst of changing professions. Now that the war is over, there is, happily, less demand for cranial surgery. I’m reading psychiatry, which can’t be a complete surprise to you.”

“I’m pleased for you,” she says.

“Would you like to see the orangery?” he asks. “For old times’ sake?”

“I would love to,” she says.

From the glass dome, Etna peers down into the tall bare trees, wet now with the midday sun. She inspects the rooftops and chimney pots, faintly pink from the low angle of the light this time of year. Inside the glass dome, there are no blossoms on the trees and certainly no fruit. But the life in them is apparent. The soil feels rich to Etna’s touch.

She circumnavigates the dome, touching bark and leaves as she goes. “What did we do here?” she asks.

August, already seated, seems surprised by the question. “Your memories came as small jolts,” he says.

“And then I had one big jolt.”

“I would have said that you were catapulted into yourself by your spoken name.”

“Do you think,” Etna asks, “that on that first day, the day you found me in the garden, if I’d heard my real name, I’d have accepted it?”

“Yes, but the shock—and I hesitate to use the word; it’s imprecise—might have been too much for you.”

“I was happy here,” she says.

“But you struggled.”

“I was happy here,” she repeats. “You drew out my artistic skills.”

“Merely encouraged them. In retrospect, the best I can say for what happened here is that I helped you to prepare yourself for the moment you would discover who you were. As you wrote to me, your drawings were in fact memories trying to break through. As for the rest, other circumstances proved more efficacious. Really, the most important thing you did here was to unburden yourself of poisonous images.”

“I suppose I have worked out that the deafness I experienced when I saw children in the garden here and other places represented an inability to tolerate my feelings of guilt at having abandoned my children. So that when I saw children, I went deaf to prevent myself from hearing their cries—by that I mean my imaginings of their cries.”

“And then once you had gone deaf, you were able to sink into a kind of calming joy,” August says.

“Yes,” Etna says.

“That would seem to make sense.”

“And I’m positive, as I wrote you, that the menace I felt at the back of my neck that manifested itself in a kind of seizure ended the moment I had the courage to drive past the house where Van Tassel and I lived as man and wife. The sense of menace was because I feared him—both emotionally and physically.”

“Do you still fear him?”

“No,” she answers honestly. “I don’t.”

There is a silence between them.

“August, I must see Phillip.”

“Phillip Asher?”

She knew that August would be curious, hearing the name. But she did not expect him to look so surprised.

“I have never met him,” August says.

“I haven’t seen him since that moment in the hospital tent when he was brought in with his damaged face. I’ve written to him at the convalescent hospital in Kent where he is staying but have had no reply.”

August clears his throat. “I can’t encourage you to pay a visit to Phillip Asher. The sight of him may once again be too painful for you. But I understand that if you’ve come all this way for that purpose, no one can dissuade you. I can arrange for the appointment. I’d be more than happy to go with you. By the way, where are you staying?”

Etna names the hotel.

“When would you like to make the visit?” he asks. “Normal procedure in such a circumstance is to call and ask for an appointment, particularly with severe cases. We don’t want to visit when Asher is recovering from a recent surgery, for example.”

And Etna can see that during those practical sentences, August has recovered himself.

“Can you take care of that?” she asks.

“Yes, I will. When we go downstairs.”

“The crossing was awful. The sea was roiling.”

“After so much death on the sea from German torpedoes, it’s easy to forget that the ocean itself is man’s most dangerous threat. Were you frightened?”

“One gets tired of being frightened, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes, I would.”

“I must go home with a letter from Parkhurst. August, I dislike using you in this way.”

“You don’t use me. You have never
used
me. I had hoped we had gotten beyond the doctor-patient bargain we made so long ago.”

“We have,” she says.

August follows Etna down the several flights of stairs and has her wait with him in the morning room while he telephones the director of the convalescent hospital. He asks about visiting Phillip Asher. It is the director’s opinion that Phillip might well benefit from company. He has few visitors.

“We can go as soon as next week,” August says to Etna when he has hung up.

“Then yes, let’s do that. I need no preparation.”

“I think lunch is ready.”

“I was hoping you would show me around London a bit, if you have the time.”

“I shall make the time,” August says, smiling. “I’ll come round for you at your hotel tomorrow morning, say around eleven?”

“Perfect,” she says.

E
tna tucks her hand into the crook of August’s elbow. They have had their luncheon on the Strand and now stroll toward Covent Garden. They have no destination, a state Etna prefers more than any other. Their height causes passersby to glance in their direction.