Then Hang All the Liars (23 page)

Maybe.

“I can't shake the feeling that the imaginary baby Felicity talks about is important here.”

“To Percy?”

“To Percy. To Felicity. It figures somewhere.”

Emily sighed.

“Does it, Emily?”

“I'm afraid it might. Sort of indirectly.”

“So there was a baby.”

“Yes.” She fiddled with the handle of her mug. “There was. I knew you'd realize that sooner or later. Yes. Felicity
did
have a baby.” Then she leaned back and Sam watched as her body relaxed. There. Fifty-odd years. She'd finally said the words.

“When?”

“In 1937, in New York. She was twenty-two. It was a disaster. She could have gone far.” Emily shook her head. “I hate waste.”

“Why did that stop her? I know it was a different time, but I wouldn't think a child would necessarily end her career.”

“Because that was when her manic-depressive cycles began in earnest.”

“You mean the shock of the baby's death brought them on?”

Emily's head snapped.

Uh-oh. She'd gone too far too fast. Nobody had said anything about the baby dying. At least nobody here today. That had been Felicity who'd said Emily had killed the child. Not exactly what one wanted to bring up at this juncture.

“Noooo.” Emily drew the word out, all the while playing with the heavy gold chain she wore around her neck and the engraved locket-watch suspended from it. “No,” she repeated, “the pregnancy triggered the cycles. The change in hormones. You know, women experience all kinds of aberrations in their bodies during and after pregnancy. Curly hair goes straight. Allergies they never had before. Multiple sclerosis. Pregnancy can be very dangerous. And in Felicity's case, it was.” Then she smiled slightly as if she knew she wasn't going to get away so easily. “So it wasn't the fact that she thought the baby died that brought on the manic-depression. Though that certainly didn't help.”

“What do you mean
thought
?”

Emily's eyes suddenly went big. Here it came.

“The baby didn't die. I mean, I told her that the baby didn't make it. But she did.”

“A girl.”

“A beautiful little girl.”

“What happened to her?”

“Nothing catastrophic. Her grandparents raised her.”

“But wouldn't—”

“No, no.” Emily shook her head. “On her father's side. The baby grew up with that family.”

“And Felicity's daughter's alive now?”

Sam had done the calculation earlier. She'd be in her early fifties.

“No. I don't know.” Emily fidgeted with the locket, snapped it open and shut. “It was better that Felicity thought she was dead, so she wouldn't have to worry about her the rest of her life. And I didn't want to know either. Her grandparents were good people. I helped them with her financially. Other than that, I don't know anything. I don't know what happened to her.” Her voice was so low at the end that Sam could barely hear her.

“Emily,” she said, “as respectfully as I know how, I have to tell you that I think you're lying. Or at least sidestepping.”

Emily turned her head, staring at the walls as if she'd never seen them before, at diplomas and awards inscribed with her name. At photographs of herself, young and old, in whites, in khaki, and in street clothes, smiling in a variety of groupings. Emily in her early fifties standing next to a grinning John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

“It's the same thing, isn't it? And I'm not very good at it.”

“Nope.”

“I've never been good at deception.” Then she turned back and looked Sam straight in the eye. “Except those years in the camp in the Philippines.” She pointed a forefinger. “I was
very
good then.”

“I bet you were.”

“Please don't patronize me.”

“I'm not. Nothing could be further from my intent, Emily. I think you're a courageous woman. And whatever this is that you've hidden for so long, I know it's been very hard for you.”

“It has. But there's no excuse for it, for my behavior, for the lies.” She stood now, straightening her backbone, and strolled back and forth in a short path between her desk and the table. “They were wrong, and they made it harder for everyone. Especially for Margaret.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Margaret Landry.” Emily's eyes drilled into Sam's then, her head high, her jaw strong. “My niece. Felicity's daughter.”

*

“His name was Johnny Jackson. Hoppin' John was his nickname—the name he used on stage.”

Emily was telling it all now. She couldn't be stopped once she'd started. Sam had already gotten up once and found the place down the hall, poured them each another cup of coffee. She didn't want Emily to move. Just keep talking.

“He was an actor?”

“A musician. Jazz musician. He played the saxophone, I believe. No, the clarinet. That's right.” And then her eyes went away somewhere. “We used to go and listen to them in a club on West Fifty-second Street. Late at night, till the wee hours. A small room filled with smoke, women in satin dresses,
that
music.” She smiled.

“It was really something, huh?”

“Yes, it was. Seems like someone else's life now.”

“And this Hoppin' John?”

“He was a handsome man. Well intentioned, I suppose. No, I know he was.” Emily smiled. “He was crazy about Felicity.

“God, I wish you could have seen her in those days. She was so beautiful, she'd take your breath away. Johnny used to call her his Georgia peach. And that was right on target. Such a little bit of a thing, golden. Apricot-colored, really. Her hair that shade of ripe fruit, cut in a bob. And so fragile. Georgia peach was right. You were afraid to touch her for fear she'd blemish. Bruise.” She paused for a moment. “They were the most incongruous couple.”

“He was black.”

Emily nodded. “Yes, he was. From New York. Different from any colored people
we'd
ever known. Talked fancy. Lord, I will never forget that man's clothes. He wore the most beautiful clothes.”

Sam shut her eyes for a moment and watched Gatsby toss a great tumbled rainbow of his lovely shirts on a bed for Daisy. Choosing them, of all the things he was, of all the things he owned, to prove his worth to her.

“Yet, in other ways, they were so similar. They both had a kind of frenetic energy. Moved so quickly that sometimes all you saw was what they left behind, a sort of phosphorescent glimmer.” She paused. “Am I making any sense?”

“Perfect sense. Go on.”

“Well, there's not really much to tell. They met in the Little Club one night when Felicity stopped in after a performance, and fell head over heels in love. Felicity got pregnant.”

“And Johnny?”

“He traveled. He was on the road. But, yes, he wanted to do the right thing by her. He tried to get her to marry him. But it was so ill fated. Felicity with her,
our
background. I'm afraid love doesn't conquer all. Though maybe it would have, but—” Her voice broke.

“What happened?”

“Johnny was on a tour through the Midwest. He called Felicity every night, begging her to join him, to marry him. She didn't know what to do. She was terrified. I'd come up and was staying with her. The phone would ring in the middle of the night. She kept saying she had to think about it. She was confused. And suddenly, there was silence. He never called again.”

“Because she wouldn't say yes?”

“No, he literally disappeared. It took months for us to find out anything. You can imagine, Felicity was mad with worry. She thought he'd deserted her. And we couldn't get any word. The band kept traveling. Finally the story came, such as it was. He went out for a beer one night in St. Louis and never came back.”

Was he crossing a rain-slick street? Did a speeding car bounce him up in the air and straight into heaven?

“They never found out what happened?”

“Never a trace. Nothing.”

“What do you think?”

“I think he was killed. Johnny didn't have good sense when it came to lots of things. To Felicity, in particular. He carried a picture of her and loved to show it to people.”

“So you think he bragged to the wrong crowd that this blonde was going to have his child?”

“Something like that. One can only surmise.”

“And then?”

“When she heard the news, Felicity went into labor. She was about seven months along. It was easy to convince her the baby hadn't made it.” Emily pushed at the tip of her aristocratic nose with a finger. “It seemed the right thing to do at the time. The only thing. Felicity was out of her mind. She needed to come home, to be looked after. And the baby—well, it was impossible.”

“So you took the infant to her grandparents?”

“Ollie and James Jackson. They had met Felicity and were crazy about her, though they, too, were troubled by the relationship—but in any case, they were delighted to have Margaret. She was all they had left of their only son, Johnny. They named her after his favorite grandmother.”

“And then?”

“She grew up. She prospered. The Jacksons still had two almost-grown daughters at home, so she was lavished with love. Spoiled rotten. She seemed to inherit talent from both sides. She was singing and dancing on the stage of the Apollo by the time she was a teenager.”

“So you kept in touch?”

“I sent a check once a year, and her grandmother wrote back, until Margaret was grown. Until she was through the Actors Studio.”

“Where did she think the money came from?”

Emily smiled. “I doubt that she asked. Don't children just take whatever is handed to them? Think it's their due?”

“You're right. Of course they do. And her coming to Atlanta? That was just a fluke?”

“Entirely. She'd been with a rep company in New York for a long while. It came through Atlanta on tour and Margaret saw an opportunity here for building the kind of company she'd always wanted. And, with sheer grit, she did it.”

“Not knowing about Felicity? About you?”

“Not until recently. A few months ago her grandfather told her on his deathbed that her mother hadn't died at her birth, which is the story she'd been told.
He gave her enough information to lead her to me. To us.” Emily shook her head. “Of course, she already knew us. Felicity had been a patron of the theater, on its board, since its founding.”

“Then what?”

“She invited me to lunch. Confronted me. You see, she thought, from what her grandfather said, that
I
was her mother.”

“Jesus. What did you do?”

“Well, at first I tried to bluff my way through it. It was awful. I didn't know what to do, and I had no warning. There we were, in the middle of lunch at the Ritz-Carlton, and out of the blue, Margaret starts screaming at me.”

“She was angry, of course. Terribly hurt.”

“She was
furious.
Unfortunately, what you don't know is that Margaret inherited her mother's manic-depression. And she can't drink at all. It sets her off onto wild tangents. She'd come well fortified that day. Had a couple of martinis and she was raving.”

“What did you do?”

“The worst thing possible. I told her about Felicity. Somehow I thought if I told her the truth, everything would be fine. Why I didn't realize that it was far too late is beyond me.” She shook her head. “I wasn't thinking. I felt so guilty. She got me in such a state.”

“And?”

“She called me all kinds of terrible things, and then she stormed out the dining room. Oh, it was quite something.” Emily laughed in spite of herself. “It's ridiculous, but I replay that scene again and again in my mind, and I always see it like something from a soap opera. Something I'd dismiss as nonsense and switch off.”

“And yet—”

“And yet it's the stuff of our lives. My life and Felicity's.”

“Then?”

“She went straight to our house. Felicity was home, puttering with her flowers or something, and Margaret barged right in, yelling at her, screaming. Felicity was aghast. She didn't know what had hit her.”

“But she figured out who Margaret was?”

“She had no earthly idea. I mean, she knew Margaret, Margaret her friend, Margaret from the theater. But even after Margaret confronted her with the true facts, well, it made no sense to her. You see, Felicity believed that her baby had died over fifty years ago, in part because she wanted to. The next step was to repress the whole incident, the fact that the baby ever existed, Johnny, everything. Of course, when she's not doing well, bits of it pop out, wriggle through the seams, but most of the time it never happened. She's wiped that slate clean.”