Monarch Manor

by Maureen Leurck

  Luke pulled up next to me in the driveway and got out of his car. (Another perk of living in an old house is that we didn’t have a garage. The house behind us was a coach house years ago, but we were told by the previous owner that it was sold off to become another private residence. So all we had was a patch of concrete and asphalt on the side of the house.)

  I waved Luke inside and stayed seated in the driver’s seat.

  “Yes, that’s right. And your missing child—John—would be Louisa’s cousin.” He cleared his throat. “Rather than paraphrase, I’m going to read it:

  My dear mother:

  I apologize for not writing sooner, and telling you about my trip to visit Geneva Lake, but I have been busy with preparations for the baby. As I said in my previous letter, Jackson finally agreed to visit your summer home as we traveled through the area from Madison back home to Milwaukee.

  When we reached Monarch Manor, I was certain we were mistaken, and that I had the wrong address. It looked nothing like what I remembered! Of course, it has been many years since I have been there, but I still expected that it would look the same as it did from my childhood. I’m afraid it does not, and the entire house seems to be rapidly decaying. The paint is peeling, the garden is being overcome with weeds, and the dock is crumbling away into the water. I did not get a chance to go inside, yet I’m sure it would be more of the same condition.

  One thing that will cheer you is that I did see a nest of rabbits on the edge of the flowers, near where you always told me about your secret garden. I like to think that they are, at the very least, one last holdover from your childhood—maybe some relation to your rabbit. I wish I could remember more of my few summers there. I know they would have been magical.

  I also did have a visit with Aunt Jane, as you requested, and said hello. She was just as acidic as ever, and asked why I did not bring her more petit fours from the bakery in Milwaukee. She prattled on and on about how her husband is always playing cards with his friends, and how her friends never come to visit anymore. I can imagine why after speaking with her for only a few moments!

  I hope your visit to Adare Village in Ireland with Emily went well, and that you gave the family my regards. I miss you and Emily very much, and look forward to both of you visiting next month. It will be just like our childhood—except I hope you two do not communicate in your own language still! I still have never understood why you both continued your studies of sign language, and were so emphatically dedicated to it.

  The doctor says the baby may come any day now, and I wanted to be sure I wrote you before she is born. I am still quite sure it is a girl, and I very much look forward to sharing the name with you once she is here.

  My deepest love and regards,

  Your daughter Louisa

  There was a long pause as Gerry finished, the static crackling on the phone between us. I was frozen in my seat, trying to absorb the information. Yet my brain felt full, and it was like wet ground trying to absorb rainwater.

  “Hello?” he said. “Did you hear anything I said?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. I just need a moment to figure out what it means,” I said. Inside, through our large living room windows that framed the porch, I saw Luke bend down and tickle Will before hoisting him over his shoulder and walking out of the room, Charlotte trailing behind.

  “Do you want me to read it again? It took me a few go-throughs to unpack everything,” he said.

  “No, no. Please, tell me what you think it means,” I said. Through the window, I saw Charlotte walk back into the family room, climb on the back of the couch, and stare outside, her chin in her hands and her lips pursed together. She spotted my car in the driveway and began to frantically wave. I knew I only had a few moments before she ran outside and interrupted my conversation.

  “Well, the mention of sign language for one gave me pause. Why would Emily and Eleanor have continued their study of the language, well after John’s death?” he said.

  I cocked my head to the side and I saw Charlotte run toward the front door and pull on it. “Maybe they continued studying it as some kind of tribute to John? To keep his memory alive?”

  “That seems far-reaching,” he said.

  Charlotte bounded down the cracked concrete front steps without holding the railing and with such speed I nearly gasped. She ran toward my car, waving frantically. “That does seem strange. What are you thinking?”

  “I’m not sure. But maybe there was some reason why they kept the language alive. Maybe . . .” he trailed off.

  “Maybe they were still using it. With John. Who was out there somewhere,” I finished. The words vibrated as I said them, emotion threatening to close off my throat. A tingle ran down my arms, to my fingertips, as I imagined them practicing in secret, their hands moving around in conversation.

  He was silent, and I jumped as Charlotte began to knock on my car’s window and make funny faces, sticking her tongue out and pulling at the corners of her mouth.

  “Well, that certainly could be an explanation, but we have no way to prove that”—he paused—“yet.”

  I smiled and stuck my tongue out at Charlotte. “I like your optimism. And I love that you seem to care about all of this as much as I do.”

  He laughed. “Yes, well, H-H-Haley says that I sometimes seem to care more about people and things that have been long dead, as opposed to what’s right in front of me. She says—” He stopped suddenly and I could almost hear his blush through the phone.

  Charlotte began to press her nose against the window, licking the glass. I shook my head and waved my hand, which only encouraged her to do it with more enthusiasm. “Well, I think my husband would agree with her in this instance.”

  He cleared his throat. “Yes, well, I will keep digging then,” he said, his tone as crisp as a McIntosh apple.

  I dropped my phone and opened the car door, Charlotte shrieking and running toward the house. I quickly caught up to her just before the steps leading to the front porch and wrapped an arm around her waist. She shrieked again and tried to wiggle away, but I bent down and attacked her face with kisses, until she begged me to stop.

  “Never,” I said as I pulled her toward me for a hug so tight, she shrieked again.

  CHAPTER 21

  AMELIA

  “It must be eight layers tall,” Jane had said when she ordered her wedding cake. “Eight layers tall, with a spray of pink roses in between each layer. “

  The baker had looked at her in bewilderment, her eyes flashing from Jane to Eleanor to Amelia to Mary, who slowly shook her head. The tallest cake she had ever made—a chocolate and buttercream monstrosity with muddled raspberries as a filling, and white fondant placed over the top for Betsy Letts—was six layers tall, and she did not breathe one single, satisfying breath until it was cut into perfect wedge-shaped slices and placed in front of every guest.

  “Did you hear me?” Jane took a step forward, her back straight in her drop-waist dress, her hair pinned up against her head in perfect curls.

  Amelia’s head snapped, bristling at the phrase. She had heard people say that many times to John, usually adults who had no idea he was deaf, assuming he was just another misbehaving child with selective hearing.

  “Of course she heard you,” Amelia said as she crossed her arms over her chest. Her black dress suddenly felt tight across her chest, and she took a slow, deep breath. “It’s impossible not to hear you, Jane,” she added.

  Eleanor stepped forward, in between them, as she always did, and placed a hand on Jane’s wrist. “Eight layers might be too large, Jane.” She looked at the baker, who nodded in relief.

  Jane’s eyes narrowed before she turned to the baker. “Eight. I want eight. One for each of the months in our courtship.”

  And there it was. No one could argue with sentiment for a wedding cake, even if it was terribly inconvenient. Nor could the baker squeak in protest when Jane had described exactly what she wanted: a traditional Swedish princess cake—covered in
fondant, dusted in powdered sugar, with each layer consisting of white cake, custard, chocolate chips, and fresh strawberries. Then, repeated seven more times.

  It didn’t matter that they weren’t Swedish or that Jane had never even met someone from Sweden. She had seen the cake in the latest McCall’s magazine, described as one of the most difficult, yet enchanting and delicious, cakes one could serve at a wedding. The cake shown in the article was only three stories. But, come hell or lake water, Jane would have the most difficult version possible.

  So when Jane went to cut into the cake at the reception, after the guests had released their lanterns on the lakefront, the crowd seemed to collectively hold their breath as she carelessly plunged the sterling silver cake knife engraved with her and Edward’s monogram directly into the center of the bottom piece, making the entire five-foot-tall structure sway back and forth gently.

  Jane, oblivious, hastily removed the knife, rotated it forty-five degrees, and stabbed at the cake again, attempting to make a perfect triangle cut. Again, the cake wobbled, and Amelia saw the baker off to the side put a hand over her eyes, peeking out in between two fingers. Miraculously, the cake found its footing and stopped wobbling. Edward helped Jane pull the piece out, the custard filling moving back and forth before slumping to the side. A waiter appeared and handed them two forks, and they gently fed each other, not even a wisp of Jane’s lipstick smudging. The guests clapped politely, and the waiters began to wheel the cake off to the side, to begin disassembling it for service.

  From their vantage point off to the side, John tugged at Amelia’s dress and signed, “Cake, please.”

  She smiled and nodded. “Of course. You can even have my piece. Sweets for my sweet,” she signed back. She dropped her head toward her lap and closed her eyes, whispering the phrase again: “Sweets for my sweet.” She had said it automatically, the phrase sewn tightly into her life, a part of her. But it was Henry who had stitched the words. She hadn’t spoken them since he died, she realized, and she clasped her hands so tightly in her lap that her knuckles turned white.

  Henry, why did you have to leave us? If you were still here, we would be safe. John would be protected.

  So many questions, so many regrets, especially in the last few days of his life. So many broken promises.

  She slowly opened her eyes, whispering the phrase again as she thought of the first time he said it to her. It was on one of their first dates, and he had brought her chocolate-covered cherries from a farm in Michigan. “Sweets for someone sweet,” he had said as he stood in the foyer of her parents’ estate on Lake Shore Drive in downtown Chicago.

  She laughed and said, “While I appreciate the gesture, I’d much rather have saltwater taffy,” with a wink. Her heart swelled as she realized how good it felt to laugh with someone and how long it had been since she had done so. Matthew had left for California two months before, but not before asking again if she would come. It took everything she had to press a sheet of paper into his hand and ask him to write. And for the past two months, she had kept her feelings—her regret, sadness, loss—in the locked jewelry box of her mind and tried to look ahead. Until finally, Henry appeared.

  And so after that first date, “sweet or salty” became their whispered phrase; whenever they were at a party and a man was obviously trying to court a woman, they would say, “Do you think he wants to give her something sweet or salty?” and then they would have to pin back their laughter. It became their first shared experience, a private joke, that would carry them to the next date, and beyond. It was the seed in the dirt, ready to be watered.

  They had said that at one such occasion, at her father-in-law’s birthday party at the newly opened Drake Hotel in downtown Chicago. John was only two years old and everyone already knew about his inability to hear, but the Cartwrights were trying desperately to pretend it wasn’t true.

  “He will start speaking soon,” Amelia had overheard Margaret say to Tracy Drake and his wife, in a voice loud enough that everyone knew she didn’t care who heard. “Heavens, Henry didn’t speak in full sentences until he was almost five.”

  Which, of course, wasn’t true. Before John was born, Margaret told everyone that Henry was a precocious child who came out of the womb practically skipping and negotiating deals.

  Thankfully, the Drakes didn’t seem at all interested in John. Amelia overheard them switch the conversation to the sugar maples on their property in Lake Geneva. He had one hundred of them dug up from Williams Bay and planted at Aloha Village, his estate, so named after he and his wife took a trip to Hawaii, a place they mentioned so often in conversation it was hard for Amelia to keep her face pleasant.

  Later that night, after the party, when Amelia and Henry were home in their bedroom and John was in bed, Henry had sat on the edge of the bed, his back to Amelia, as he untied his shoes.

  “She mentioned it again,” he said quietly, slowly removing one of his black oxford shoes and placing it off to the side.

  Amelia froze, her blue-and-white tea-length dress half off one shoulder, limply hanging down her arm. “Oh.” Her breath quickened and her body went rigid as she balled up her skirt in her fists. Her shoulders were already knotted with stress, as she had heard a group of women gossiping about the Hoppe Brewery and how word was out that the family was beginning to struggle after the Volstead Act was passed the previous year.

  Henry turned, his eyes deep with worry, and lines on his forehead. “Yes.” He rubbed his chin slowly.

  “And what did you tell her?” Amelia raised her eyebrows, a fire starting in her spine and radiating through her body. It was the anger that fueled her, to do anything, to anyone. The first time she felt it was when she was on a walk on a cool spring morning, pushing John’s pram along the lakefront. He was six months old, but they didn’t know about his deafness. She had stopped the stroller, and bent down, and cooed his name. But his gaze remained fixed at something off in the distance. She said his name again, and again, louder each time. Yet he never turned his head at the sound. Sweat running down her back, she said it one more time, her voice coming out in a fractured tone. Another mother walking near with a pram startled and gave her a disapproving look and John a questioning one. Amelia had wanted to reach across the park and slap the frown off the woman’s face.

  And in her bedroom, she struggled with the same reaction as Henry sighed, his shoulders slumping toward the bed.

  “You told her no, correct? You told her that we will never consider sending John away to that . . . that prison of a place, yes?” She took a step forward when he didn’t look at her. “Tell me that you told her, Henry. I don’t expect that you told her exactly what kind of a person she is, or how black her heart must be, but tell me that you told her that he will never be away from us.”

  He inhaled slowly and then turned to look at her. “Of course. Yes, I told her that we would not agree to that.”

  Amelia’s arms relaxed, releasing her dress. “Of course you did,” she said. “How on earth can she believe that we would send John away to a school for the deaf and the dumb? She is his grandmother, for heaven’s sake. His family. She is supposed to protect him, and care for him, like the rest of us.”

  Henry turned away from her again, removing his other shoe. “That’s not her way. That’s never been her way. She cares more about her standing with Ada Wrigley than anything else. You know this; we all know this.”

  “Well, I certainly hope Ada and her prized hogs will care for her in her old age, and pay her visits and listen to her awful stories. Somehow when she’s even more old and gray and decrepit, I don’t foresee that anyone but us will be forced to entertain her.” The fire igniting again, Amelia began ripping her dress off, letting it fall to the floor in a heap, before kicking it to the side of the room. She walked around to where Henry sat and put her hands on her hips in front of him.

  He reached out and took her hands, but she stayed rooted in place, rocking forward and then back. “You’re right. She’s awful
,” he said. “I always thought her to be a tough character, unbending, but the way she has been toward you, and toward John.” He hung his head and shook it ever so slightly.

  She softened like butter in the sun and let him pull her toward the bed. He bent back and she lay on top of him, her face buried in his neck.

  “No one will ever take him from us,” he whispered into her hair. “I promise.”

  CHAPTER 22

  ERIN

  I heard my mother’s guffaw before I even put my hand on the door of Dilars Restaurant in Richmond, Illinois. I was walking through the gravel parking lot, trying to step lightly in my thin moccasins, the sharp white rocks piercing through the soles with each step, when I heard her laugh. Sure enough, when I took a quick glance around the side of the restaurant I saw her motorcycle parked, Ferrari-style and perpendicular, taking up two different spots.

  When I opened the diner’s front door, I spotted her and Gerry at a red plastic corner booth, mugs of steaming coffee in front of them.

  There were only ten booths in the entire place, but my mother lifted a hand and frantically waved. “Over here, honey!”

  “What took you so long?” she said as I slid next to her in the booth, across from Gerry, who looked half-uncomfortable and half-amused as he tightly held both hands on his coffee mug, a wary smile on his face.

  She didn’t let me answer and tell her that I was only three minutes late, thanks to construction on Highway 12 in Fox Lake.

  “I was just telling our friend Gerry here about the last time my group rode through his neck of the woods. There were about twenty of us, on a nice, long Sunday ride, going for a trip around the lake. Well, we were stopped at a light in town when this jerk in some sports car pulls up next to us and gives us one of those looks. You know, like this—” She rolled her eyes in an exaggerated manner and flipped her nonexistent long hair over her neck.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gerry’s eyes glaze over a bit, and I wondered if this was merely the second time my mother had told this story.