Margot's War

by Ty Knoy

  “Grandpa had not brought this up at the dinner table,” Camille said. “Uncle Clarence did that. He hadn’t even been out there when the man came by, so all he knew about it was what Grandpa told him later.

  “It was known by everyone at the table—except for me and maybe also Cindy—that Mother and Daddy were at a low spot in their relationship and that he was having an affair. Grandma, Grandpa, and my aunt Ellen all were trying to shush Clarence. Aunt Ellen, who was next to me, was kicking him under the table and whispering, ‘Not in front of the girls,’ but Clarence bore on and asked Mother straight off, ‘So, who was this man, Kathy? Yuk, yuk, yuk.’ Big smile.”

  Nick laughed. “Wow, she didn’t dump the gravy bowl on his head, did she?”

  “No. I would have if it had been me, but she just shrugged and said, ‘No idea.’ She and Clarence always had been very close, really. He was five years younger and was a little imp who grew up to be a big imp, Mother always said. So he could get away with it. Mother just ignored it. Didn’t even look up from her plate. She didn’t suggest that Cindy and I leave the room, so maybe she thought we were old enough to know, or maybe she thought we knew already.

  “So now I’ll ask you again, Mr. Rohloffsen. Have you seen this place before—the real thing, I mean?” She pointed again at the aerial photo.

  “You think that man was me?” Nick said with mock incredulity. “Why not this guy, Aaron? Or the Grain Miller guy?”

  “John Miller is impossible. Grandfather knew him. They had known each other all their lives. And Aaron, who virtually had never driven? All the way out from Manhattan in a Lincoln car? With Michigan plates?”

  “Maybe it was a Hertz. Rentals have plates from anywhere.”

  “Grandpa said it was a big man with a shock of reddish-brown hair.”

  In the window behind Camille’s shoulder, Nick noticed a cat sitting on the sill, looking in. “Do you have a black cat?” he asked, pointing.

  Camille got up and went toward the door as the cat jumped down. She opened the door and looked down for a moment as the cat scurried in past her ankles. She closed the door and said as she came back to the sofa, “Most days she brings a piece of a mouse or something and puts it on the step.”

  Camille sat. The cat sat.

  “We had a cat like that,” Nick said, “except she always waited on the step until we acknowledged the gift.”

  “Samantha would have, too, but she apparently had an unsuccessful hunt today.” Camille lowered her head but raised her eyebrows as she looked Nick in the eye.

  “It was just a matter of curiosity,” Nick confessed. “I had driven over to Iowa City with a couple of friends the night before for the Michigan-Iowa football game. Gayle and the girls had gone to Petoskey. I got up early that Saturday and drove out to the farm.” He pointed to the photograph. “I notice the mailbox here seems to be on a wooden post. When I was there, it was a wrought-iron filigree post with oak leaves and acorns.”

  “And you got there without a GPS?”

  “Just a paper map.”

  “So you had done research on who Mother was—or rather, who Margot was and where the farm was.”

  Nick nodded.

  Camille looked at her watch. “And you had been married seven years or thereabouts? And you call that always being faithful?”

  “It was just curiosity,” Nick repeated. “I was just going to drive by, but your grandfather was out by the road, so I stopped and said something to the effect that it looked like a music room had been built onto the side of his house. He was happy to be asked about it, and he told me about his daughter, how she’d been to the University of Iowa and Indiana, and that she had performed in Paris. He insisted I come in and look at the music room and pictures. Apparently, your grandmother wasn’t there. This Cadillac wasn’t in the drive—nor was any other Cadillac. When I asked, he told me she had eventually married a doctor and had taken the piano with her.”

  Camille nodded.

  “There was a big-screen television and a wraparound sofa in what had been the music room. I also noticed some family pictures, and Margot was in many of them. There was also a big old console radio, similar to one my grandparents had—you know, with the FM and shortwave bands and all. I did get back to Iowa City in time for the game, which was the real reason I went. I got back in time for breakfast before the game, in fact.”

  “And how did you know Mother wouldn’t be there? At the farm, I mean.”

  “It seemed unlikely.”

  “But you did make sure, didn’t you? A man called our house on a Saturday that fall—even though our number was unlisted—and I answered. He asked if Mrs. Kendall was at home. We were at breakfast, and I handed the phone to her, but she soon hung up, saying it was a wrong number.”

  After a pause, Nick said, “I made that call.”

  “She knew it was you. She knew it was you! I knew at the time it was someone special. She blushed or something, and I could sense it, and now I know it was you.”

  “Yes, well, I just confessed, in case you didn’t notice,” Nick said. “I know she knew. I could feel it; I didn’t even see her blush. It was the only time I ever heard her voice after Colorado, but I could feel it. It scared me. I was just calling to make sure she was in Indiana, but I hadn’t expected her voice to do what it did to me. Odd that you would remember.”

  “I’m sorry to have to embarrass you, Mr. Rohloffsen.”

  “I’m not embarrassed at all. Not at all. I unashamedly own up to every bit of it. I successfully suppressed it for forty-four years. That’s the best any man could have done—actually, far more than most men could have done or would have done. You can’t keep yourself from falling in love. That’s impossible. If it’s forbidden, the best you can do is resist it and do what’s right. You can’t just keep yourself from falling. But I did the right thing.”

  “Except for on that one weekend.”

  “Okay, okay, so I slipped a cog.”

  “Now,” Camille said, “there’s a part coming that you’re going to like. Just like my uncle, I also smelled a rat—or rather, it wasn’t that strong a smell, since I was only seventeen then, and I was still naive at seventeen. But I felt it. Two days later, on the train, I asked Mother if she really did know who the man was who had come to the farm.

  “She knew I was on to something. She glanced at Cindy, who was curled up asleep on two seats across the aisle. She told me it was a man she had been terribly in love with, that he had been pledged to another, but that she prayed every night that he someday would come back on his white horse and save her.”

  Nick sighed. “She made a joke of it?”

  “I don’t think so,” Camille said. “I think it was truth fashioned as a joke, so as to cover the fact that it was truth. She was telling the truth in such a way that it seemed to be untruth. Technically, then, she wasn’t lying to me.”

  “If you’re just making this up, Camille, please don’t ever tell me.”

  “We stayed that night at the Palmer House—the Loop was so festive at Christmastime in those days—and shopped the next day at Carson Pirie and went to the Art Institute before going on to South Bend. I told Cindy the next day what mother had said and how she had said it. Cindy took it the same way I did: truth disguised as a lie. She is a year older than me, but she’s always been two or three years wiser.”

  After a pause, Camille added, “I think you could have had her.”

  Nick’s heart pounded. He took a deep breath, held the breath, and pressed it.

  “It would have been complicated for you,” Camille said. “Maybe Daddy wanted to marry his mistress but wanted Mom to make the first move.”

  “What about Mr. Miller?”

  “He doesn’t count. I’ll get to that. It wasn’t what it seemed. I’m sorry; I really must change my clothes. I’ll tell you the rest of it as we go in. Make yourself at
home. Can I get you anything?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “There’s a bathroom off the kitchen.” She went down the hall.

  Once again, Nick hoped to be taken to Katherine Anne, but his hope had become mixed with dread—even fear—of how it might be.

  CHAPTER 19

  PHOTOGRAPHS IN FRAMES stood with books and knickknacks on a glass and chrome étagère. Nick’s eye went to studio portraits—he had glimpsed them from a distance when he was first brought into the room—of Katherine Anne and Dr. Kendall in silver frames hinged together. Dr. Kendall’s portrait was the same as the one he had seen the day before at the country club gallery of past presidents in South Bend. Dr. Kendall’s presidency had been 1971 to 1972, so the portraits had been taken when the Kendalls were in their late forties, a decade or more after Nick had last seen Katherine Anne. As he expected, she had become more beautiful with age.

  On a lower shelf, in a pasteboard folder that had fallen over but was open, was a posed photo of her and Dr. Kendall—he in a tuxedo, she in her wedding gown. Nick studied it for a long time and still couldn’t make up his mind if she was the young woman who had rescued him from under the horses.

  Among school photographs of the Margolis’s sons was a photo of the older son in a Green Beret uniform. On another shelf was a shoulder-behind-shoulder portrait of Camille’s grandfather and—Nick presumed because he had never seen her—Camille’s grandmother.

  On the top shelf was a framed snapshot—somewhat out of focus and with red bounce-back in the doctor’s eyes—of the Kendalls and their Margolis grandsons, ages about six or seven. The four were posed over a jack-o’-lantern on the stoop of the very house in which Nick now stood. Dr. Kendall wore a bulbous clown nose, and Katherine Anne was in a witch’s hat with a pointed top and wide brim. The boys were in store-bought devil and Frankenstein suits, trick-or-treat bags in hand.

  Nick wondered why the photograph, despite its poor technical quality, was cherished, and by whom.

  The house phones rang twice. Moments later, he heard a door opening and closing, followed by the sound of the garage door.

  He was about to sit down, but instead he stepped behind a curtain as he saw out the window a man and a woman in the front yard. She had a casserole dish on a tray, and he was taking the tray from her. The man—Nick knew because he had just viewed his and Camille’s wedding photo—was Larry Margolis. Larry and the woman talked for a moment, then turned and walked away from each other—she toward the sidewalk, he toward the garage.

  Nick sat back to look at the aerial photo again, but he stood right back up as Camille came out in her bathrobe with bare feet. “There’s a message on here for you,” she said, handing him her cell phone. “A man named Alan. He rather urgently wants you to call him.”

  “That’s scary,” Nick said. “Thank you.”

  As Camille went back down the hall, Nick sat again and called Alan Maarten. “Nick,” Alan said, “I called your mother like you said, and I swear to Christ I didn’t tell her a thing, but she knows. She knows what you’re doing, and she knows who the woman is. She wants you to call her right away.”

  “She’s okay, is she?”

  “Very much so. She doesn’t know where you are, and I didn’t give her this phone number, but she wants you to call her right away.”

  Nick dialed as Larry Margolis came from the garage hallway into the kitchen. Nick’s mother picked up just as Larry was placing the casserole on the stovetop. Nick and Larry waved at each other.

  “Nicholas,” his mother said after he had assured her he was perfectly all right, “I should have told you this years ago. The woman you’re trying to look up, Kathy Stratton—Kathy Kendall—was, or is, a disturbed person. She was once involved with Victor, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “You probably don’t remember this, but I took you out of her lap once on the porch of the Grand Hotel, and she frightened me. She didn’t want to give you up. It was something about how she’d saved you from horses and now you were hers. The way she said it made me quiver.”

  “Do you think Victor made her crazy?

  “Something did.”

  “Listen, Mom, I’m in someone else’s house right now, and I have to act like a guest and get off their phone. It’s an awkward situation, and I need to get off the phone.”

  “You watch your step, Nicholas. Watch your step.”

  “I will. I’ll call you later tonight or tomorrow. Please call Alan and let him know you heard from me.”

  After the dish was in the oven and the dials set, Larry motioned for Nick to come into the garage hallway. Across from the laundry Larry opened a door. The room was a home office and den with furniture in leather, a desk, computer equipment, and a large-screen television, muted, tuned to a football game. Easy chairs were in front of the television. Shelves were lined with books and manuals.

  “I’m Larry Margolis,” the man said, offering his hand as he quietly closed the door. “I understand you’re Nicholas Rohloffsen, former CEO of Rohloffsen Brass.”

  Nick nodded. “I suppose you’re wondering what I’m doing here, and of course, I’m wondering the same thing.”

  Larry smiled, shaking his head. “The girls have been keeping me informed,” he said. “They aren’t exactly playing a game with you, Mr. Rohloffsen. They got themselves into a collective dither earlier today, thinking you needed to be protected.”

  “I’ve been wondering if that’s what they’ve been up to.”

  “Protected from yourself, that is. It started with Priscilla Smith, the receptionist, and it all sort of built from there.”

  “I was kind of goofy with her.”

  “Have a seat, Mr. Rohloffsen,” Larry said, gesturing toward the easy chairs. “Can I get you a soda, a beer, or something?”

  A line across the floor from the television ended in earphones on a table between the chairs. The faint frenzied voice of a football sportscaster was seeping from one of the earphones. Larry picked it up and switched it off.

  “I’ll have a diet something—ginger ale, if you have it,” Nick said as he sat.

  Larry reached into a refrigerator under the minibar and took two bottles. “I talked to Bill Gordon, the police detective.”

  “Former detective, I’ve been told,” Nick said. “An interesting guy.”

  “Uh, right. Everyone still thinks of him as a detective. He’s still a popular guy—in spite of everything.” Larry paused, then said, “Also, he doesn’t think you’re crazy.”

  Nick laughed. “I’m glad to hear that. I haven’t been sure of it myself, but it’s nice to have a second opinion.”

  “Glass?”

  “The bottle is fine,” Nick said. “I’m a former CEO, working my way backward from Victorian mannerisms.”

  “You don’t sound crazy to me either,” Larry said.

  “Ah, a third opinion. Thank you.”

  “Crazy people tend to lack senses of humor and are never self-deprecating. So you’ve probably figured this out yourself.”

  “Katherine Anne’s not in good shape then. Is that what you’re about to tell me?”

  “It’s more than that,” Larry said. He took a deep breath. “Katherine died last night.”

  Nick sighed deeply and felt tears come into his eyes, but he didn’t sob. After a moment, he said, “I was sure something was wrong—dementia, maybe paralysis from a stroke—but, well, that hadn’t occurred to me.” After a moment, he asked, “Was it sudden? Did she die in her sleep?”

  “Not in her sleep. She did pull the alarm cord, but she was gone by the time the nurse got up there. It was just after midnight.”

  Nick thought of himself standing on his car’s doorsill, looking up at the windows. I should have gone up, but then how could I have? Even if I had gotten in, I wouldn’t have known where to go. “I was here in town last night.
I should have gone straight to her then. Instead I had a gin and tonic at the piano bar. How goddamned awful of me. What a difference it would’ve made. Was she in good condition up to then?”

  Larry nodded. “Very good. It was totally unexpected. I saw her last Sunday. She was over here for dinner, and she seemed fine. Cammy visited her yesterday, and she didn’t say anything was wrong. I’m so sorry, Nick. You were really wound up in her, weren’t you?”

  “She wanted to live,” Nick said. “She pulled the cord, so she wanted to live. I didn’t need that gin. I’m not even a drinker. Why did I do that? Why in the goddamned hell did I do that?”

  Larry put his hand on Nick’s shoulder and handed him the bottle. “Priscilla Smith called this morning and told Cammy you were here and why you were here. Priscilla had come in at eight.”

  “I know.”

  “So I don’t think Priscilla knew about Katherine right then. She found out a little later, when she phoned Cammy.”

  “I actually fell asleep in the lounge while she ran errands, and she was very nice to me after I woke up.”

  “Priscilla was flustered. Cammy asked her to call Lille, who called here, and Cammy asked her to string you along until she could get to you.”

  “This thing about two girls fighting in your store. Was that just a ruse?”

  Larry chuckled. “Unfortunately, no. We were called on that just after nine, after an hour or so of sleep. Cammy and I had been called at about twelve-thirty to come to the hospital. The EMTs got there with Katherine before we did. Resuscitation was failing, and she was pronounced dead soon after we arrived. Cammy rode with her mother to the funeral home. Back home, she cried, and we were up together until after four. Then Priscilla called, and not long after that we were called in to the store.”

  “What a night,” Nick said.

  “The girls were afraid you’d harm yourself, either accidentally or on purpose, or go off the deep end. So they decided not to tell you until someone from your family could get down here. I thought it was a harebrained scheme, but …” He shrugged.