The Truth of the Matter (32 page)

When she broached the idea to Agnes, Lily said that since Robert wouldn’t be with them, there was no need to make plans carved in stone. “And you don’t even need to worry about what to pack. Just throw any old thing into a suitcase. Well, you remember how it is in Maine. Or at least the part of Maine around Port Clyde. There’s no place less fancy, and we’ll probably be cleaning house, anyway,” Lily added.

“Robert can’t stand for any part of a trip to be spontaneous, but that’s the way I think is the most fun to travel. We can just take our time and not feel pressed one way or another. We can stop whenever we want. With the little girls along, that’s the best plan, anyway. We can play it by ear.”

But neither Lily nor Agnes had expected the trip to stretch out over eight days, traveling on the third day no more than two hours from where they had been the night before and spending two nights in Portland when Amelia Anne got sick. They got a late start from Scofields the last Sunday morning of May, with the little girls in the backseat of the Butlers’ 1939 Buick. That was their second mistake, Lily declared, three hours later, when she stood on the side of the road to flag down a ride to the nearest gas station because the radiator had overheated. “But I don’t suppose we really had any choice. Oh, we could have gone by train. But we’ll have to have a car while we’re at the farmhouse.”

And it was nothing more than their own lack of common sense, Lily said later—or maybe just outright softhearted cowardliness—that had led to their first big mistake. Before they had managed even to clear the shallow driveway in front of Scofields, Amelia Anne had begged them to stop the car; she declared tearfully that she couldn’t go to Maine after all. She was distraught when Bobbin began howling from the foyer of the house the moment he became aware that her straw sun hat, her beach towel, and, most particularly, her suitcase—with which he had been unfamiliar—signified Amelia Anne’s departure. And it was clear that something about the rushed morning, the hasty preparations, tipped Bobbin off to the certainty that Amelia Anne wasn’t coming back soon.

The poor dog was nearly beside himself. He stood on his hind legs with his front paws braced against the decoratively carved molding and was just able to see the car from the lowest pane of lights framing the front door. He threw his head back, rolling his eyes up so that only the whites showed, and he made a sound of such desperate and heartbroken supplication that it was very nearly bloodcurdling. No one at Scofields had ever heard anything like it before. Both Agnes and Lily decided there was nothing for it but to take him along, and that delayed their departure at least another hour while Trudy and Amelia Anne found and collected Bobbin’s leash, a bowl, and other paraphernalia.

They set out once again and made it as far as rounding Monument Square when Mary Alcorn considered the fact that Bobbin was coming along but poor Flotsam and Jetsam were left behind. “They won’t even come out from under the bed unless it’s me or Grandmother,” she protested, and privately Agnes had worried over the same thing herself. She knew they certainly wouldn’t starve to death, but she was afraid they might simply disappear after several days without her or Mary Alcorn in the house. Collecting the cats set them back another forty-five minutes at least.

Agnes and Lily had intended to stop at hotels or motels along the way, but by necessity they narrowed their evening destination to any place they might come upon that would accept a dog. They planned to leave the cats at large in the car overnight with a dishpan of sand Agnes had rigged up and a bowl of water. En route, the cats were restricted to a large, closed cardboard box with a series of holes cut through the sides, and they rode unhappily between Agnes and Lily in the front seat. Bobbin insisted on sitting next to a window with his head outside and his ears blowing straight back, so Amelia Anne and Mary Alcorn arranged a system of trading off the other window seat whenever they stopped.

The first afternoon, however, they discovered that there were very few places to stay that accepted dogs, and none at all that would permit cats, even though Agnes and Lily explained time and again that the cats would spend the night in the car. “That’s what they all say!” the elderly owner told them when they stopped with the intention of staying at his alarmingly modest Guest Home. Lily gave him a dollar and simply informed him that she was going to use his phone. Agnes and the girls and all the animals stayed where they were, and the owner remained beside the car, leaning against the hood with his arms crossed, whistling through his teeth while gazing off in the direction of a cluster of tall, rusted rubbish cans. But no one in the car was fooled for a minute; it was clear that he was there to stop them in case they made a break for the house themselves. Lily simply let herself in the front door and presumably found the telephone.

Lily had been anticipating the peaceful anonymity of staying at hotels, declining several invitations from old friends who knew from her letters that she was coming their way. She hadn’t wanted to expend the effort involved in being a guest, but Lily and Agnes, the little girls, and all three pets ended up staying with friends of Lily’s every night of their trip. They were made much of that first evening by Lily’s old friend from Mount Holyoke, Anna Cook Elliot, who lived in a handsome house in Erie, Pennsylvania, which had an enclosed porch where she insisted Agnes set up the sandbox and release the cats. “I’d be glad to let them have the run of the house,” she told Agnes, “but I don’t know how Gato might behave.” She gestured toward an orange Persian cat who gazed steadily at Flotsam and Jetsam through the glass door with a squashed, malevolent expression that was probably beyond his control, but also with his ears—such as they were—lying flat back against his head.

Agnes didn’t think she had ever in her life seen Lily in such a state of delightfulness. Clark Elliot, Anna’s husband, had known Lily almost as long as Anna had; he had been at Oxford with Robert and was a great admirer of Robert’s poetry and criticism. And Agnes herself relaxed when she realized that these two people were genuinely delighted to see Lily, even with her entourage. In fact, Lily turned the evening into an inclusive, celebratory occasion, and in the morning the Elliots tried to persuade Lily and Agnes to delay their trip for a few days. “I’m certain Roselle Alcorn’s husband is originally from Natchez, Agnes. Oh, she’s wonderful . . . she’s just wonderfully eccentric! And you’ll like him, too. I’d bet anything you’re somehow related. Lily, just give me some time to put together a little gathering. . . . Oh, and for the little girls, there are children right next door . . .”

But Lily demurred, although they did stay for a leisurely breakfast, and Anna Elliot saw them off after arranging for them to stay with a mutual friend in Rochester, which was a comfortable day’s drive farther along. And so it went, day after day; they made the trip in short hops from one acquaintance to another. By the time they reached Maine, Agnes—and especially Lily—each felt that throughout those seven nights, she had socialized with more concentration than she had ever brought steadily to bear over so long a stretch of time in her whole life.

“I feel like we’ve been passed along the underground railroad,” Lily said to Agnes in the front seat. And she turned to tell Mary Alcorn and Amelia Anne how proud of them she had been. “You two must have been practicing all these weeks,” she teased them, “so that everyone would know that there never were two nicer girls!” But the children, and Bobbin, too, were limp with fatigue. Bobbin had no more interest at all in looking out the window; he had relocated to the floor, which he had to himself, since the girls’ feet only dangled over the edge of the backseat. Even the cats had given up their complaints two days into the journey.

Mary Alcorn and Amelia Anne had instinctively taken their cue from Lily and realized that the key to finding shelter was to win over their hosts with impeccable and unobtrusive good behavior. Watching Lily exude an odd, nearly frantic variation of charm, however, put the girls on the alert, although clearly Lily’s friends had no idea that Lily’s behavior was extraordinary. The little girls caught on at once and were both quick studies, and even Bobbin seemed to understand the situation. If he couldn’t make friends with whatever ensconced pet he encountered, he stayed out of the way.

They left Maddy Forholtz’s tall Victorian house in Portland, Maine, after breakfast on the morning of the second night they had spent with her, since she insisted they stay when Amelia Anne had eaten breakfast the day before and had promptly thrown up. Maddy had been three years behind Lily at Mount Holyoke, and they hadn’t known each other very well at all, but Maddy had expressed delighted enthusiasm at having her company when Esther Merriam had telephoned from Boston and explained the travelers’ plight. Lily and Maddy wouldn’t have recognized each other, but they had a genuinely wonderful time sitting up late talking, because they were spared the necessity of discussing their days at college. Lily had been a senior the year Maddy arrived, and the two had no school experiences in common.

“Wasn’t it nice,” she said to Agnes in the car as they drove north, “that Maddy’s husband was dead? It was so much more fun. . . . Oh, well! Of course, not so nice for Maddy. I never knew him,” she said defensively. “I never knew Maddy for that matter. . . .” But Agnes understood precisely what Lily meant and agreed with her; she didn’t even bother to reply. Almost six hours later they finally passed through Tenants Harbor, Maine, and Agnes spotted the big farmhouse as it came into view just as they rounded the curve into Martinsville. The house sat reassuringly on a hill and backed onto a meadow that stretched more than two hundred yards to the sea. The windows stood open and the muslin curtains billowed inward with the breeze. The enormous, ancient lilacs around the house were on the downward cusp of their blooming, the flowers hanging as heavily as grapes; the scent reached them before they turned into the drive, and even from the car, they could see the glittering blue-green spangle of the ocean.

“Thank goodness,” Lily said as she pulled up in front of the sagging, attached barn. “Marjorie’s been here already. I told her not to bother, but I’m glad she didn’t pay any attention to me.”

It was about three in the afternoon when they arrived, and they unloaded everything onto the lawn so that Lily could go on to Port Clyde and buy something for dinner and for the next morning’s breakfast before the store closed for the evening. “Oh, I hadn’t thought about its being Sunday,” Lily said. “But someone might be there. The owner used to live upstairs. He might let me in. Just to get milk and eggs. And coffee.” As Lily was pulling out of the drive, however, Marjorie Hockett pulled in behind her and beeped the horn. She leaned out the window while at the same time a dark-haired little boy piled out of the car door, and then another, and another, and another. They seemed to be many versions of the same child, all of them with beautifully thick, short hair, almost exactly the color and sheen of a seal’s coat.

“I didn’t think you’d be here yet,” Marjorie said loudly over the clamor all around her. “But don’t worry! I come bearing gifts!” she said. “And friends!” she added as she, too, climbed out of the car, encumbered by a large basket. “I didn’t know you’d arrived yet. I was just going to stop by and close the windows and leave you some supper,” she said as she gave Lily a quick hug with her free arm and smiled a welcome to Agnes. “My niece is leaving in the morning, and this is the boys’ favorite spot on the peninsula.” She gestured at an attractive couple probably in their thirties who had emerged finally from the backseat and were shaking hands and introducing themselves.

“Aunt Marjorie talks about you all the time,” Carolyn Hupper said to Lily. “But we didn’t mean to intrude. . . . Dora said they weren’t expecting you until this evening, so we thought the boys could get one more look. . . . I mean, we’ve been so looking forward to meeting you, but we wouldn’t have descended like this.” Meanwhile, it seemed to the stunned travelers that children of every size swarmed around Carolyn Hupper’s skirt and her husband John’s long legs.

“The Huppers—and all the little Hups—stay for a few weeks every summer,” Marjorie said breezily, while handing a bag of groceries to one or another of those boys who then carried it into the house. “You knew my brother died a few years ago?” she asked Lily, more seriously, and Lily nodded. “I’m always hoping Regina—his wife?”—and again Lily signified that she remembered—“I’m always hoping she’ll visit as well,” Marjorie continued, “but I think it’s hard for her to travel so far. And she’s probably afraid of all these little rascals,” she said to her great-nephews, all of whom seemed to take it as an inordinate compliment. “They’re wild as marsh hens,” she said, but fondly, “as soon as they get out of the city. Only a mother—or a great-aunt—could love them when they’re awake. And, oh,” she said, looking around to find her, “this is my friend Dorothy Admunson.”

“Oh, Marjorie. Please! I’m ‘Dora’ to everyone,” she said. She was a tall, trim, tanned woman with a slight foreign accent of some kind, who looked to be about Agnes’s age.

“Do you remember Mrs. Rupert’s lemon meringue pie, Lily?” Marjorie asked. “Do you remember? We thought it was the height of culinary achievement. . . . Well, Dora wouldn’t stoop so low!” she said. “The things she bakes. . . . You’ll see for yourself. We’ve brought dinner for everyone and supplies for the kitchen. For breakfast, at least. Probably enough to get you through tomorrow. I thought you’d all be tired, but you look wonderful. Fresh as daisies! And these must be your granddaughters. Warren’s granddaughters. I know you wrote me, Lily, but it really is uncanny. You can’t miss the resemblance! I’m so glad to see you!” she said to Amelia Anne and Mary Alcorn. Dora and the Hupper parents murmured and nodded in agreement. The four boys had put the groceries on the kitchen table and headed straight through the meadow toward the water, and Carolyn held the fifth little boy, who was just a toddler, in her arms, although he was struggling to get down. Lily was gazing at her speculatively, and Carolyn said, “The third two are twins.”