The Angry Woman Suite (8 page)

“Yes—I've told her.”

My stomach pains were unbearable, and for some stupid reason I looked to Earl, who was staring at his feet. I knew once we were upstairs he’d say I’d started the whole thing, but it wasn’t true. The most innocent question could start the women off.

“You couldn’t keep him,” Mother said to Lothian, sounding sad. “Really, no one could.”

Was
him
the one who’d gotten away? Were they starting in with that again?

Lothian lunged for Mother, but like a flash Stella inserted herself between her sisters and whirled like a top, stamping her huge feet and waving her long arms, twirling so hard and fast her pale hair came loose from its knot and its thin strands flayed the air, putting me in mind of what an escapee from the Portsmith asylum might actually look like.

“Stop it!” Stella shrieked. “Stop it!” This sounded like “Awpa! Awpa!”

Predictably, Mother dropped onto a chesterfield, and Stella and Lothian faced each other, panting. I glanced around the room. Earl still looked mesmerized by his feet, and Grandmother, impervious, clicked her needles together. I’d have bet neither had even looked up. Lothian gestured pointedly at the portrait that had started it all.

“Francis dear, the day has finally come, and, well … Waterston be damned. There’s just one thing you need to know, and that’s
why
we let your mother keep her damn painting hanging over our heads. It’s a reminder, dear.” Carefully, oh so slowly, Lothian bent and put her embroidery hoops back in her box. “You see, it helps keep the hate alive. And hate is all we have left.” Lothian straightened and smiled. “I’m going upstairs.”

I switched my attention back to Stella, who was trying to comfort Mother. But Mother didn’t want comforting. “Stella, give me a minute!” Mother said, extricating herself from Stella’s frantic clutches. Even though Mother tried being kind to Stella, Stella never knew when she overdid. Pain crossed Stella’s horrible features. I could tell she felt rejected, and I felt the old solar plexus punch of compassion.

“Stella!” I cried, running to her, grasping her arm and burying my face at her waist. “Stella! It's all right! Please don't cry, Stella!” Stella’s arms slid over my shoulders.

“You're a good boy, Francis! You're a good boy! I don’t want fighting, Francis! No fighting!”

“It’s all right, Stella,” I crooned, unable to move my head. “I love you, Stella. It’s all right.” Stella’s fingers dug into my arms, hurting me, but it didn’t matter. Next thing I knew, Mother had her hands on my shoulders, too.

“Yes, he's a good boy,” Mother agreed. “He's my good boy. Now Stella darling, calm down and let me have my good boy.”

“Well, you did it again,” I heard Grandmother say, and then I heard the clickety-clack of her needles dropping into her needlework box, heard her say, “Come, Earl, it's bedtime,” and Grandmother and Earl left me immobilized, unable to breathe, held solidly in place by prostrate women.

“Well, that was stupid,” Earl yawned. “When’re you going to learn?”

“You’re
stupid,” I retorted. I took off my shoes and stockings, folded my stockings inside my shoes. Removing my pants and shirt, I took my nightshirt down from its peg on the wall and pulled it over my head. I wondered what it might be like to sit in parlors like other families, listening to Aidan Madsen on WDEL hosting “Folks at Home,” instead of watching women fight. I wondered why my insides had to churn so much all the time, and why I even tried pleasing the women when there was never any pleasing them. I wondered what it would be like to be grown up, to be able to do what I wanted, without women telling me to take my hands out of my pockets, or to sit up straight and stop humming.

I started humming, and Earl told me to shut up and go to sleep, and I wondered why he had to be such a thorn in my side, and why the women had so much hate, and why in the world they wanted to keep it alive. If I’d have had all that hate, I’d have wanted to kill it. And then it occurred to me, an idea, and I wondered if Matthew Waterston was the young man who’d gotten away from the women and made them so mad at one another. It seemed likely.

“Earl,” I said, slipping between sheets and grasping my cramping gut, “who’s Matthew Waterston really? Is he alive or dead? Mother said he’s
still
famous, so he’s alive, right?”

Earl yawned again. “Don’t you know anything, stupid?”

“I don’t know
why
this Matthew Waterston’s name got the women so riled up. In particular, I mean. Is he the reason why the women hate men? Was it his running away that broke their hearts in two?”

I heard Earl turn over. “Where’d you hear
that
one?” Then, “Ask Mr. Madsen,” he said.

And that was it, the genesis of two things: the first being the notion that broken women could be fixed. The second being my idolization of Aidan Madsen, not only the most respected man in two counties, but a man who apparently knew all about Matthew Waterston breaking women’s hearts. And if Aidan Madsen, who’d rescued me once, could see himself clear to helping me out one more time and tell me
how and where
Matthew Waterston had done his heartbreaking thing to the Grayson women, then all I had to do was work backward from where he left off and pick up those broken pieces and put them back on the women. Then, with the women patched together, I could hum to my heart’s content, knowing I’d saved a life.

Mine.

***

Hot breath on my eyelids. Lips grazing my cheek. I squeezed my eyelids tighter, hoping the tiny teeth would not bite down this time, or at least not too hard.

“Please,”
I pleaded.

“Jamie,” she sighed like always. “Oh, Jamie.”

Why did she always call me Jamie?

The lips moved away, but her breathing remained ragged. I couldn’t open my eyes, not yet, because I knew it was coming. I prayed for it
not
to come and then I prayed for it to hurry and come, and then I promised myself that the next day I’d make myself get up and out with the dawn like Earl always did.

She wore gloves and smelled of lilacs, which meant she was ready for town.
“Jamie,”
she sobbed, agitation growing.
“Why, Jamie?”

The first blow landed on my ear.

“Where it won’t show,” she hissed, mean now. Then another and another after that to the top of my head. I knew better than to cry out, for sooner or later crying made things worse. And then Lothian said to me what she always said when she was finished:
“You know why.”

I always cried afterwards. I cried a great deal. Not because it hurt so much, although it did. But because Lothian was wrong. I didn’t have a clue. I didn’t know why she wanted to hurt me, or why she hated me—why
anybody
hated me. I was just a kid. A little kid. And there was no one to ask. Not my mother, she was too busy. And not Grandmother because she’d say I was looking to start a scene. And forget Earl. Earl lived for me getting shot down instead of him. And if Stella had ever found out what Lothian did to me, there’d be no end to the shrieking. Besides, if I’d told on Lothian, I’d
still
have gotten the devil, probably even more so. Ha, no probably about it. Worse, Grandmother would’ve sent Stella packing to that Portsmith asylum she was always threatening her with. And
if Stella
had ever
really
gotten herself locked up in the loony bin, then Mother would’ve wanted to beat Lothian to a pulp because she’d be so mad about Stella getting sent away. But then Mother would’ve had to win her match against Lothian in the very first round, and that was the next problem: Mother had never won anything against Lothian without Stella running interference for her.

I hated Stella for being so pivotal. But you can see why I couldn’t tell anyone about Lothian hitting and biting me and calling me Jamie. Possibly, the better reason for not telling is I just didn’t want to burden Stella. Yes, I did love Stella—just like I’d love
all
the women once they were fixed. Do you see? Despite the hurt done to me, I was a very thoughtful boy. A loving boy. A boy on whom everyone and everything depended. The women just didn’t give me enough credit.

AIDAN
Pennsylvania 1933

It had been nearly five years since I’d last spoken with Magdalene Grayson. For that matter, since I’d even seen her. Five years, an eternity. Amazing, considering our proximity, because we lived a mere mile apart. But I’d worked hard at our “estrangement,” making short shrift of the communiqués between us, glancing over my shoulder whenever I was in town, keeping an eye out for her just in case.

I saw the boy first, his profile, and my heart thudded. Unbelievable—the spitting image of Jamie. I adjusted my spectacles and ducked inside the nearest shop to catch my breath. But then I felt compelled to take another look and one at Magdalene as well. After all, it wasn’t as if a
hard
reason existed for not exchanging civil greetings. Our relationship wasn’t one of open warfare. We
did
correspond, if infrequently, and this was a day I
had
dreamed of, a meeting I’d played out in my mind a hundred times, projecting everything right down to the most minute detail: what I’d say to Magdalene, her obvious pleasure at seeing me, the brief repartee we’d share, and then finally the regret in her eyes.

A regret lighted by a flash of belated recognition that
I
was the one she’d always wanted.

Only now, here was the boy. Here was Jamie’s twin.

Oh, it was foolish—but I’d always been foolish when it came to Magdalene Grayson. Which was why I dreaded those missives of hers and the responses required of me.

My eyes watered, making Magdalene and the boy only a smear, and my consciousness slipped through a new crack in its casing, moving tentatively back in time, until I saw myself with Matthew Waterston and Lear Grayson lounging under the old oak, ever-present gins well within reach. Matthew stood before an easel, paintbrush in hand, laughing at something Lear was reading aloud.

It was an odd picture. Matthew had never painted out-of-doors that I recalled, and I didn’t remember Lear Grayson ever reading aloud to us—why would he have? I shook my head and wiped my eyes—and that’s when time played another trick on me; I
heard
Lear and myself drunkenly declare ourselves the chosen, the mighty, and with Matthew at our helm,
the
colony destined to become renowned. I heard us liken ourselves to our countrymen in Paris, only instead of the Seine we had the humble Brandywine, and in place of Harry’s we had the old Turner mill house.

Enough. I stepped out of the building on Broad Street. Truth was Lear and I’d been self-appointed purveyors of excess, period. We’d been co-conspirators.

He’d been the somber man, a business lawyer, which meant Lear Grayson had made a great deal of money telling other people what to do with theirs. He’d been, hands down, the wealthiest man in three counties—until 1911, when Matthew Waterston had brought his fortune to the Delaware and Chester counties, along with his need for long stretches of respite. No matter the credit given me since, Matthew is the start of our story. Back then, compared to Matthew Waterston,
the
premier American painter, I’d been a nobody. Even Lear had paled by comparison. Before Matthew Waterston, we’d
all
been relative nobodies.

A lump formed at the back of my throat, and I had to remind myself it isn’t my nature to wallow in introspection. Still, Matthew Waterston’s laughter reverberated in my head, and I suddenly realized what he was laughing at. He wasn’t laughing at what Lear Grayson was reading: Matthew was laughing at
me.
How many times had Matthew told me I was thick as a plank, more interested in squeezing a buck until it danced, and in gin and history books and my museum, than in what lay beneath the surface of things? Sure, Matthew had found me amusing, sometimes interesting, possibly challenging, but he’d always said, “Look deeper, Aidan.
Think.”

But for some, introspection shows up late, if at all. Introspection is the bane of getting old. It’s about coming to grips with loss of youth and vitality, of family, and ways once believed to last forever. Aging is about losing friends. I think that’s the hardest part of all: losing friends. Maybe that’s why I resist introspection so much, why I prefer my gin, music, and the solid dependability of history books. I’d never wanted to see myself as old or lost or used up. Unlike Lear Grayson, I’d refused to give in. Instead, I’d re-scripted my reality, accommodating various versions of what had happened between me and Lear, and what happened to Stella
because
of what had happened to Matthew Waterston and his legendary suite of paintings.

The boy’s eyes connected with mine; he’d sensed me looking at him. He was so like Jamie I almost wanted to hide, to forget. But I also wanted to connect with the boy. How could I not? I wanted to hold him. I wanted to never let him go.

The long-awaited time had come.

“Magdalene!” I exclaimed, crossing Broad Street quickly, hand extended. “Magdalene Gray—” I faltered, for although Magdalene had reclaimed her maiden name, unheard of for those times, but then that was Magdalene for you, I’d no idea what surname this son went by. Crazy as it seemed, I’d made it a point to
not
know, believing the more I knew the more I’d want. Was the boy’s surname the same as Earl’s? Had I been on the verge of a
faux pas,
and
so quickly into the game?

Magdalene’s hand slipped into mine, and her eyes were as warm as I’d imagined, pale blue, just as I remembered. She
was
glad to see me. “Grayson,” she finished, not the least ruffled. She put her other hand on top of mine, and we leaned back from each other. I don’t know what she saw, probably an old sawhorse of a wreck, but what I saw was a revelation, a revelation I’d glimpsed years earlier, when I’d tried projecting what Magdalene might look like as a grown woman, when I’d
wanted
to see her as my contemporary. It was extraordinary; she was in her early thirties now, but hardly changed. Her hair, beneath the wide-brimmed pastel-colored hat she wore, was pale, the near-platinum made ethereal by still unlined, milky skin. I was reminded of silvered light, and those old summer days that had stretched long and golden, filled with lazy energy and unbroken dreams.