The Savage Kind

by John Copenhaver

  Judy didn’t respond. She’d made her point.

  PHILIPPA, NOVEMBER 15, 1948

  It’s nearly 1:00 A.M., and I can’t sleep. I’ve been up for over an hour. Exhausted, I went to bed early, and then at 11:30, I woke up with my heart pounding. Propped up at the foot of my bed, Mr. Fred glared back at me, his eyes glinting in the shadows. I didn’t like it, so I grabbed him and squeezed him. My mother’s locket slithered through his stuffing and strained against his faux fur, and I remembered Judy’s question: “What’s the worst thing you’ve done and never gotten in trouble for?” Considering everything we’d experienced, sewing the locket inside Fred seemed childish. I tossed him to the side and whipped back the coverlet.

  I padded downstairs, working out the kinks in my stiff legs. Dad was still sitting at the kitchen table, paying bills.

  “Nightmare?” he said, looking over his reading glasses. “You want to talk about it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Are you okay?” he inquired, removing his glasses.

  His shirt collar was unbuttoned, and his tie was off and slung over the back of his chair. His handsome face was grooved and weary, but softer. It was too late in the evening for his usual formality. Lately, I’ve been steering clear of him, but tonight he seemed relaxed, even open, and I needed someone to talk to. It was too terrifying to tell him what we’d witnessed, though.

  My first instinct was to ask him to retell the story of how he met my mother, about their blind date mix-up, about how they hadn’t liked each other at first, but later ended up bumping into each other at a cocktail party and hitting it off. About how, once they fell in love, it had been certain and clear, like the diamond on her engagement ring. About how the wedding was a rush job at Harpers Ferry, just immediate family, but lovely, on a crisp and bright spring day. But as soon as the thought popped into my head, I saw instead the shape of Miss Martins’ face pressed against the underside of the wet sheet. An echo of my bad dream. Not a wedding veil, but a winding-cloth. The contours of her face contorted; it seemed like she wasn’t so much dead as in the process of being formed out of a viscous white substance. I teetered, gripping the edge of a kitchen chair to steady myself. The sheet melted away, leaving a woman’s face I’d never seen, a blurry composite of Miss Martins and my mother.

  “Are you okay?” Dad asked, beginning to stand.

  “Yeah,” I said, waving the image away. “Just a bit tired, I guess. There’s so much to think about, and now Mrs. Peabody and Judy are…” I said, regretting my choice of topic. “At odds.”

  “What happened?”

  “The Peabodys were upset about Bogdan being released from custody, so when I got there, Mrs. Peabody lashed out… at me.”

  “She did?”

  “And Judy got angry, very angry, and they had a quarrel—well, it was more than a quarrel.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.” I bit my lip.

  “Tell me,” he said, stern again.

  “Judy smashed a photo of Jackie.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

  “You should’ve heard what Mrs. Peabody said to her. That they’d made a mistake in adopting her. It was so evil.”

  He shifted his weight back, the caning in his chair creaking, and said nothing.

  I turned to the refrigerator and rummaged through it. I located the milk and a leftover piece of sweet potato pie. I poured the milk in a saucepan and began to heat it up. It was my childhood antidote for nightmares.

  Breaking the silence, he said, “You need to take a big step back from them.”

  An angry lump rose in my throat, but instead of snapping at him, I said, “Judy needs me. Especially now.”

  “You’re not helping them. The Peabodys need to work things out on their own, and you need to focus on school and being a normal teenager.”

  “What does that mean?” I said, allowing my temper to crest a little. “Is that something you aspire to be? A normal father? A normal lawyer? A normal husband?”

  He winced. “I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “All I know is Judy is changing you, and not for the best.”

  A thin layer of skim had formed on the milk. An image of Miss Martins under her soaked shroud rose up again, and I quickly stirred the simmering liquid. I removed the saucepan from the burner and switched off the gas. “You’ve been listening to Sophie.”

  His eyes were steady, penetrating.

  I tipped the saucepan, pouring the hot, frothy liquid into a celadon mug. I held it close to my lips and took in the rich odor of the milk. “I won’t promise to stay away from her.”

  He looked like he might become cross. “The Peabodys are grieving.” His expression loosened. “They thought their daughter’s murderer was going to be locked up, and that hope was yanked out from under them. Grief can make anyone, even the most self-composed person, act out of character.”

  “Mrs. Peabody wasn’t acting out of character.”

  “Maybe, but do you know her well enough to say?”

  I sipped my milk, set it down, and slid the pie closer. After plucking a fork from the drying rack, I sank it into the dense filling.

  “Are you going to offer me some?” he said and wiggled his eyebrows.

  I scooped up a bite, held my hand under it, and delivered it to his mouth, smearing a little on his cheek, like he’d always done to me. He ate it and wiped his face with a napkin.

  “Sit down,” he said, nodding to the chair across from him. “I want to tell you something—something I should’ve told you before.”

  “Okay.”

  I picked up the piece of pie from the counter and came to the table.

  “As you know,” he began in a subdued tone, “your mother’s death was a difficult time for me. The hardest in my life. Harder than the war. If it hadn’t been for you, I’m not sure I would’ve made it out of my grief—or my guilt.”

  What did he mean by “guilt”? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  “You see, having children for me was important, and your mother…” A thorn of some memory was digging into him. “Well, she didn’t want children. Not at first, anyway. But I was young, and I couldn’t understand that. It shocked me, and I was angry. I told her that not having children was odd, that people would talk. Eventually, she gave in, and you came along.”

  He scanned his checkbook and the stack of bills as if they were memories he couldn’t quite piece together. I didn’t know how to process this news—I still don’t. It stings that my mother didn’t want children, didn’t want me. I existed because of him, because of his persistence. As I sat there pushing around the pie with my fork, I felt a shift in my heart, a step away from her, that impossible dream, and a step toward him, something sturdier, something real. I wanted to say something to him, but his expression was closed off, tangled, and he was struggling to form words. The lawyer! Then, instantly, I understood what he was trying to tell me. I said, “Do you blame yourself for her death?”

  An intense tug of war played out on his face. I’d never seen him this way, so fraught, so vulnerable. It irritated me, then angered me, but my fury was brief. As I write this now, something else has bloomed in its ashes. What, though? Gratitude? For him? For his honesty? I don’t know.

  “You fixing milk like that,” he said. “It reminds me of her. What she’d do when she was sleepless.”

  I stood, went to him, and gave him a sideways hug. I was glad that he’d told me about my mother, but I didn’t want to linger too long. He felt prickly, electrified. What he told me drew me closer to him but also made him more foreign to me. He’s no longer just my dad, but a flawed husband and a guilty lover. He let down his guard, but that’s not always a good thing. No one wants to see their parents in their underwear.

  He patted my forearm and whispered, “I don’t want anything to happen to you. Promise me you’ll stay away from Judy and her family.”

  I released him without a respons
e.

  JUDY, NOVEMBER 15, 1948

  My room is a dead girl’s tomb.

  Sure, I’m here in bits and pieces. In the rickety stand below my record player, I sorted my singles and albums alphabetically: Debussy, Ellington, Fitzgerald, Parker, Piaf, and Satie, etc. Next to my bed, I sprouted a stack of novels, gradually growing like a literary stalagmite: Lady Chatterley’s Lover, A Puzzle for Fiends, Wuthering Heights, Miss Lonelyhearts, The Gemini Case, Nightmare Alley, and The Razor’s Edge. On the fireplace mantel, I displayed bric-a-brac from national monuments, souvenirs from beach vacations, and postcards of creepy portraits by Dalí, Magritte, and Modigliani. Much to Edith’s dismay, I tacked sketches of bizarre art class still lifes and tracings of fashion ads from Charm and Glamour over my desk. Under the bed, wrapped in a dirty baby blanket, I hid my scrapbook, sliding it out late at night and pasting in personal keepsakes, newspaper clippings, drawings, and my thoughts.

  But the room itself, with its fringe, molding, and girly colors, was designed as a backdrop for Jackie, and her presence is still stronger than mine. I’ll always be an inferior substitute. The saccharine to the dead girl’s sugar. The chicory to her coffee. The Sears catalog to her couture boutique. I’m glad—no, thrilled—that I destroyed her stupid fucking photo. I’m over the moon that Edith is now downstairs, sweeping up the glass. I hope she cuts herself.

  Someone’s at the door—

  * * *

  Bart just left, and I’m—I don’t know what I am.

  If it wasn’t enough of a blow to discover that Miss M isn’t my mother, any vestige of her, any glimmer of my silly fantasy has been ripped from me.

  You see, I know the truth: I’m a big nothing, a zero girl. I’m from nothing and headed toward nothing.

  When he opened the door, Bart braced himself as if he might need to duck. Did he really think I was going to hurl something at him? He stepped in and shut it behind him. His wide patterned tie was loose, his shirt was in need of ironing, and his blazer hung from his shoulders like a damp rag. He reeked of bourbon, but if his steady movements were proof of anything, he wasn’t smashed. Perhaps he was just warming up. He smiled at me and wandered over to the window, took in the street below, and said, “I know you’re angry.”

  “Wow, you’re brilliant,” I said.

  “Your mother can be cruel.”

  “She’s not my mother.”

  His gaze was unfocused, and his eyes were wet. Over the years, he’d been kinder to me than Edith had been—and more in touch with reality. After all, he was the one who popped Edith’s balloon and sent her off to “convalesce.” Since then, he has hovered beside her, becoming more see-through the more he drank. I couldn’t hate him, but I didn’t want to be around him. His self-loathing spread like a fog, engulfing whoever was nearby in its sour haze.

  “I know she’s not your mother,” he said, “and I know she hasn’t been a particularly good mother at times, but you’ve wanted for nothing.” He pointed at the ceiling, the roof over my head.

  “I’d rather live in a box than this mausoleum.”

  He moved a few paces toward me, inches from the edge of my bed. “Look,” he said, “there’s something I should tell you. Maybe I should’ve told you this before. Edith had a younger sister, a kid sister named Olive, who died during the 1916 polio epidemic in New York City. It was devastating for her, and shortly after, she went for a rest cure. Her trip to the Greenbrier after Jackie’s death wasn’t her first time. I know she comes across as confident, even overbearing, but she’s fragile.”

  I glared at him: “Where did I come from?” I didn’t want to hear about Auntie Olive, whoever that was, or Edith’s crack-up.

  “What do you mean? Crestwood?”

  “I mean, who are my real parents? Who’s my real mother?”

  “We don’t know. You were left at the—”

  “No, you know. Who’s Charlene Peters?”

  He stood a little straighter and sighed. “You read more of those papers than I thought. Okay, she’s your mother.”

  “Yes, but who is she?”

  He studied me grimly. I expected to detect anger in his face or some feeble attempt to show authority, but instead, I saw pity. It’s a terrible look, vicious and devastating. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but she was a victim, you understand.”

  I scooted back an inch or two. I didn’t understand.

  “She was taken advantage of by a man and couldn’t care for the child. She gave you up for adoption.”

  His curly brown hair lay flat on his head, glued down with oil, and his cheeks, pocked with evidence from his teenage blemishes, were pale and lifeless as a lunar landscape.

  “What are you saying?” I glared at him in complete disbelief.

  “She was, ah—”

  “She was raped?” I hated that he made me finish his sentence.

  “If you want to put it that way. Yes.”

  “And I’m the result?”

  He stared at me, blankly. My thoughts were careening around the room. Why was he telling me this now? I wished Philippa were there. I really needed her.

  “Edith doesn’t—”

  “Shut up,” I snapped. I didn’t want to hear his voice. It felt violent to me, invasive. “I’m a mistake that keeps getting in everyone’s way.” I stared at him, burning him with my eyes. “No wonder Edith treats me like I’m subhuman.”

  He dropped his head, but I couldn’t tell if he actually felt bad or if it was put on.

  “So,” I said bitterly, “that’s why you didn’t want me digging in your papers.”

  He nodded but avoided eye contact.

  “And you never met her?” I asked.

  “It was all done through Crestwood.”

  The bald spot on the crown of his head was exposed, and I imagined splitting it like a sack of grain.

  “Believe me. Our intentions were—”

  “Get out.” I didn’t care what his intentions were.

  “Judy.”

  “Get. Out.”

  He dropped his shoulders and lurched away. I imagined Philippa stepping forward and, strawberry curls swaying, hurling a question at Bart, startled by her own gall. So, before he reached the door, I channeled her and asked, “What’s your relationship with Moira Closs?”

  He let go of the doorknob. “We’re friends.”

  “What kind of friends?”

  “Old friends.”

  “Don’t you think it’s odd that two ‘old friends’ have children who die in similar ways?”

  He lifted his eyes to meet mine. “It’s horrible.”

  “What does she know?”

  His limp expression sputtered to life. “Stay away from her, from all of the Closses. Promise me.” Recently “Beware the Closses!” has become the mantra of everyone in my life.

  “What does she know?” I repeated more heatedly.

  Gloom hooded his face. He was loyal to her, to that bitch.

  “Tell me.”

  He left silently, closing the door behind him with a muted click.

  Feeling the full force of this news, I gasped, and hot tears welled up. I clutched my mouth and screamed into my palm. I caught the bedcover in my hands and wrung it, forcing my pain into it. I hated being lied to. I was glad Philippa wasn’t there to see me like that, so blown over.

  “There are three sisters,” Miss M had told me, “Clotho spins the thread of life, Lachesis directs it, and Atropos cuts it. Gods and men submitted to them.” I’ve been struck down by Atropos, and now I’m in Lachesis’s grip. Where is my thread going to lead?

  PHILIPPA, NOVEMBER 17, 1948

  It’s been two days, and Judy hasn’t been to school. I’ve tried calling her several times, but nobody has picked up. So, despite Dad’s and Quincy’s warnings, I went to the Peabodys. Before I approached the front door, I lingered by the gate. The house’s buttercream icing stucco, ornate Juliet balcony, and crown molding struck me as flimsy, like the recycled and jerry-rigged backdrop of a high school
musical. I felt like I could give it a nudge, and the whole thing would topple over. I’ve become more sensitive to the fragility of facades.

  I made my way to the door and knocked. No one answered, so I tried again, this time banging the brass knocker. It echoed through the house. I waited a little longer and turned away. I was almost at the gate when a voice behind me said, “Hello?”

  I spun and saw Bart Peabody. He was leaning forward, steadying himself against the out-swung door, holding a glass decanter half-full of a caramel-colored liquid and an empty tumbler. “Philippa,” he said, slurring his words. “How?—What are you doing here?”

  “I’m returning a book,” I said, lying. On my way out, I’d grabbed Brideshead Revisited from my shelf to serve as a cover for my visit. “Is Judy in?”

  “No,” he said. “Edith and—they’re out getting their hair done.”

  Judy must’ve been forced into it. What a nightmare!

  I held out the book as I neared him. He shrugged and said, “Don’t have enough hands. Come in.” His face was flushed, and his eyes were soft and unfocused.

  Edith’s calla lilies still dominated the table in the foyer, but instead of the ornate frame that Judy had destroyed, there was a smaller, more modest frame for Jackie. The marks on the table had been blotted out with stain. Edith wouldn’t be daunted. Jackie was her religion.

  “Drop the book there,” he said, closing the door and lurching forward to recover his balance. It was 4:00 P.M., and he was three sheets to the wind. I felt a little bad for him. I set the novel beside Jackie’s photo and said, “Well, I should be going.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “The book?”

  “What else?” he said, smiling. “Is it about second marriages? Brideshead Revisited?”

  “Huh?”

  “Exciting stuff, I’m sure,” he said with a chuckle. “Or maybe it’s about returning to feminine purity.” He snickered, then stopped himself, seeming to realize that what he’d said was inappropriate.