“Well, with a childhood surrounded by books and so much enthusiasm for the pleasures of learning, I ended up following the teaching profession, too.”
“Only natural.”
“Yes, I suppose. Anyway, by the time I graduated college and got my first contract—teaching English at the Harristown School for Girls, in Pennsylvania—my parents were getting on in years, and I decided to move back in with them.”
“Also quite natural.” He opened the picnic basket they had brought out earlier, and took out two mugs and the thermos. “Cream and sugar, this morning?”
“I'd love cream and sugar, this morning. I just might have cream and sugar from now on.”
“Under the circumstances, I think it's a fine idea. Might as well enjoy ourselves. So, you moved back in with your parents. Then what.”
“Then my Aunt Mad—she was my father's younger sister, and our only living relative—went back to Broadway. She had been living with them while I was away at school, and teaching drama at the Harristown School, too. But she missed the real theater.”
“A true actress, then.”
“Only in small supporting roles. But you know they kept her busy all the time? She was quite a character in real life, too. I was named after her. And I loved her very much.” Stella felt another catch in her throat (what an emotional morning it had been!), and waited for it to pass. “She gave me everything she had.”
“I suppose you inherited, later. Being her only family.”
“You could say that.” She blew on her coffee and took a sip. “She was married once, but it was way before I came along. Her husband died in the war. World War II, it was. He was a navigator on a B-17 bomber. Anyway, she never married, again. She was the eccentric old aunt, like you read about in books. That's why we called her, Aunt Mad. Although it was really short for Madison. Now, I'm going to skip ahead, because absolutely nothing happened for the next twenty something years.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Nothing to do with the story. Anyway, the years went by. First my father passed away, and then—not even a year later—my mother.”
“Often happens when people are close.”
“I've heard that, too, and that's just how it was. Well, for the first time in my life, I was all alone in the world. You can't count college, because no one's really alone there. Always somebody around. But after Mom died, too, I was so despondent. I knew I needed a complete change.”
“Understandable.”
“So, I packed everything up and went to New York, to live with Aunt Mad. Who was in her late sixties, by then, but still taking on a few roles just to keep herself in shape. She was always dedicated to staying in shape.”
“Ah, that's where you get those tendencies.”
“Goodness, she had me doing morning exercises since I was twelve.”
“It shows.”
“Thank you, dear. It wasn't difficult. I admired her, and always wanted to be like her. But it was truly providence that I moved in. I can see that now, looking back on it. Because less than a year later, she was diagnosed with heart disease, and I ended up taking care of her the way I had my parents. You know, when you live with someone that has an illness, your life becomes enmeshed with doctor's appointments and hospital stays. Not much time for anything else.”
“Lonely, too, I imagine.”
Stella realized he knew where she was going with all this, and probably even knew how much she was avoiding the actual point. Then it occurred to her (funny how a person's mind can jump ahead to conclusions at the very time they're busy doing something else) that Colonel Oliver P. Henry knew her as well, if not better, than she knew herself. At least as thoroughly as she had come to know him. Which was her favorite, all-consuming pastime, these days. Getting to know him. At which point, such a feeling of love washed over her for this man she had married, that the rest of the story came out all in a rush. Practically without thinking.
“Oliver? I married the most wonderful man in the world—that I knew nothing about—who turned into the most horrid man in the world, not two months after I married him. He was either a spy, or insane. I don't know which. He actually tried to kill me—twice!”
“Stella!” The way he whispered it, along with the look on his face, indicated he was thinking of never having met her, rather than how she could have possibly made such an error in judgment.
It was the only thing that gave her courage to get to the hard part. Because all those old dredged-up emotions were now beginning to churn inside her like the rumble of thunder before a storm. “He was terrible to Aunt Mad, too,” she pressed on.
“So, I... I had to put her in a home until I could straighten things out. Except I never did get things straightened out. They only got worse and worse. I even had to take a leave of absence from my job and move. In the middle of the school year! But he followed me. Next I tried moving out of state. But he found me that time, too. I don't know how. I actually think he was trying to drive me crazy. For my savings, maybe. Not that I had so much, but I lived a simple life, and did have a small inheritance from my parents. By that time, I was close to a nervous breakdown. I'm almost sure of it.”
“Did you ever go to the police?”
“I couldn't make myself. He was always threatening to kill Aunt Mad if I did. Then he got more reasonable for a time—probably because I'd moved her around so much by then, he couldn't find her. Anyway, he said if I turned over my savings...”
“Oh, Stel.”
“He'd at least give me a divorce and leave us alone. Of course, he didn't. I got the divorce, though. Because I didn't turn over any money until it went through. But...” She set her cup down on the wood block and looked out at the meadow, again. There were three black-tailed deer grazing out there, now. “It wasn't long until he wanted Aunt Mad's money, too. And she had quite a lot.”
“You should have gone to the police. Seems you both would have been prime candidates for a witness protection program.”
“But I couldn't prove anything. Other than incompatibility, and there's no law against that. He was very cunning. Almost like a politician. Only worse. Anyway, one day, I woke up with the most urgent feeling that I should move Mad, again. Just as fast as I possibly could. You know, I wonder if that came from the Lord.” She looked back at the colonel. “Do you think God intervenes in people's lives that way, even before they become Christians? I know he does afterward. I believe that with all my heart.”
“Most definitely. He knows our end from the beginning. Who will choose him, and who won't. I'm sure all believers can look back on times when someone—or something—intervened at a vital point in their lives before they ever knew him.”
“I think so, too. And it definitely explains a lot of things to look at it that way. Like my hair turning prematurely white before the age of fifty.”
“Indeed. So, did you get Aunt Mad moved then?”
“She wouldn't go. She was scheduled to have her pacemaker replaced the following week, and felt she'd be perfectly safe in the hospital until she recovered. Instead, she came up with another idea. A brilliant one, actually. Except... it backfired on us.”
6
“She wasn't really mad, you know,” Stella insisted. Just eccentric. Had her own ideas about things.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” the colonel agreed.
“But she was independent, too. Didn't like being told what to do. Having to be shuffled from one facility after the other in such a short time... well, it was definitely taking a toll on her. The poor dear wasn't well to begin with. You know, Oliver? Sometimes I think people get misdiagnosed with Alzheimer's when it's only a reaction to some drug they're taking. Or maybe even a temporary response to a bad situation at an age when they're not up to handling that kind of stress, anymore. Sort of a defense mechanism, you might say.”
“I wouldn't be surprised.”
“I've thought a lot about it.” Stella held her cup out for a warm-up when the colonel opened the therm
os, again. “I never for a minute believed she had Alzheimer's.” She was quiet for a long time after that. Just sipping on her coffee and thinking back over it all.
“I take it you had a more difficult time getting her back out of those places than into them.”
“I certainly did. Except...”
“Except?”
“Except it was me that couldn't get out, Oliver. Because we switched places.”
“Stella!” The coffee he was pouring into his own cup spilled over the brim, onto his hand, and he nearly dropped it before setting the thermos down. But he barely noticed. “What were you—how could you even—”
“It was Aunt Mad, dear. She was so convincing. Which was one of her gifts. You know what she said?”
“I'd like to know what she said. Indeed, I would!” He switched his cup to the other hand and shook the spilled coffee off his other one. “You're a very reasonable woman, as a rule. I can't imagine you'd be taken in by such a thing. Or that something like that was even possible to pull off. Not for any length of time, anyway.”
Which Stella couldn't reply to because she didn't know the answer to that, either.
“What exactly did she say?”
“She said, Stella, my girl? This... could very well be... our finest hour!”
“That's it?”
“Well, then she went into one of her long stories about surviving the World War. How Churchill kept saying everyone was going to be tapped on the shoulder at some point—figuratively speaking—and called upon to do something only they were perfectly skilled in, or had the talent for. That we should all be working to perfect our skills and talents for just such a time. What could be worse, he said, than not being up to it at the moment your time came. You would miss your finest hour. Or some such thing. I forget exactly how it went. Except I've been looking for my finest hour ever since.”
Now the colonel was quiet for so long she had to glance over to make sure he didn't think she might be crazy, after all. That thing she had been afraid of all along, and the reason she hadn't been brave enough to tell him she had spent so much time in a mental institution in the first place. Which suddenly made her wonder if such an omission might be grounds for divorce.
She began to get butterflies.
“Dearest!” It was as if everything had come clear to him, all at once. He set his cup down, then hers, so he could take both of her hands in his own. “To spend one's life looking for their finest hour... I can't think of anything more noble!”
“But I've never had one, Oliver,” Might as well be up front with it all, because she couldn't take another session like this one, again. The thought of losing the happiest times in her life over her mistakes of the past was practically unbearable. “I've failed miserably at everything I've ever tried.” She came right out and admitted it.
“Don't tell me your ex-husband found you, again, after all that.”
“No. But I had nightmares about the possibility for the rest of my life. Not to mention a phobia about getting home before dark, every night.”
“Then—in spite of the dire consequences—the brilliant plan worked. Did it not?”
“Not really, because I lost my Aunt Mad. Entirely. I Never did see her, again. And because we had done such a terribly good job of switching places—my white hair and all—we could have been twins! Can you believe that? And she was so sure they would let me out a few days later, after preliminary blood tests for the surgery. When our blood type didn't match. Then I was supposed to explain how she had tricked me. She told me to blame everything on her, since it was going to be her finest hour. She wanted to do it up right, she said. And she was sure they'd believe it because she'd been pulling things like that over on them for quite a while, anyway.”
A twinkle came into the colonel's eye, but he kept a straight face.
“You know, she snuck out more than once to see a Broadway show? Right under their noses! They don't watch people half well enough in those places.”
“So, even if they didn't believe you, why wasn't it just as easy for you to walk out? And I can't imagine the hospital didn't release you the very minute they found out you were the wrong person.”
“Because there never was a surgery scheduled. It was only the story they told her, so she'd go peacefully while being transferred to a lock-down ward at the, um... state hospital.”
The colonel gasped.
“For hard-to-handle Alzheimer's patients.”
“But—good heavens—what about the blood type?”
“She was my father's sister. And, I'm afraid, it turned out we had the same blood type, too.”
“Stella—dearest! How long did they keep you in for?”
“Two years. It took that long to quell my temper, and stop acting like a crazy person. I think I really was temporarily out of my mind. I was that upset.”
“I don't blame you.”
“But I had to behave normal enough for them to even begin to listen to me. It was the only way. Something extremely difficult to do under heavy sedation. You know they drug everybody in those places?
“I can't imagine.”
“Not everyone to the same extent, but they do. Even more so at eight o'clock”
“Eight o'clock?”
“PM. The bedtime hour. There's no such thing as insomnia in a place like that. Especially if you can't behave.”
“My word. I do some of my best work during bouts of insomnia.”
“A lot of older people do. But you can't do it there. It's practically impossible to do anything there, really, except the most basic of human functions. Simply because you feel like a zombie most of the time. But I finally made friends with a young aide, who helped me a great deal.”
“Another divine intervention!”
“I think so. Little Clarita Alverez. She helped me track down the last remaining shreds of my paper trail. The one I tried so hard to erase, for three years before that, so you-know-who wouldn't find me, again. And because all my current documentation disappeared with Aunt Mad... well, I had to locate enough witnesses, who could remember me, and go to court. But you know how long the court system takes.”
“What about duplicate driver's license's—passports—that sort of thing?”
“The name Stella Madison always bounced back to Aunt Mad. Who was recorded to have died of heart disease, the same year all this happened. But I don't for a moment believe that. In fact, I wouldn't put it past her to try covering her tracks—my tracks, I mean—thinking she was doing me a favor, before she even got to the apartment in California. The one I had already rented for us there, where we agreed to meet. Then again, she might have just taken off on her own. As much as she loved me, I think she'd had quite enough of rest homes by then. Not to mention her finest hours.”
The colonel was quiet, just trying to take it all in. But he still had hold of her hands, so Stella was encouraged by that. In fact, she felt as if a great burden had been lifted off her. Why hadn't she told him sooner?
“You know, dearest,” he spoke thoughtfully, “if we ever get back to civilization, I'd like to try and look into this a little, myself. I've had to do a lot of people-searching in my profession, and I don't mind saying I'm pretty good at it.”
“Well, if you'd like to, dear.”
“I would. After everything you've been through, it would at least put your mind at ease, knowing what really happened.”
“It certainly would.”
“What is your real name, then. The one you traded off to Aunt Mad.”
“Stella Madison.”
“What?”
“Stella Madison, dear. She was my father's sister, and I was named after her. I thought I told you that, already.”
7
Millie had a turkey for Thanksgiving. In fact, she had brought three—who knew how far the nearest grocery store would be when living in the wilds of Alaska? Little did any of them know how literal that situation would become. At any rate, when the holiday finally rolled around, their
meal lacked nothing that might be found on millions of other American tables for that special day. Some things were even better.
For instance, the cranberry sauce was made fresh, from a patch of berries Lou Edna had discovered at the far end of the meadow, just where the muskeg began. It was a beautiful spot near the edge of the forest, that led to a piece of land which had the most sunlight of any place in the tiny valley. Because it was directly in the path of sunrise as it came spilling in over the rocky coast, every morning. Before bumping into the mountains that ran along each side of their narrow inlet.
It wasn't until the little family had gone, and the rest of them took a picnic to see if there might still be enough of a crop left to can, that they discovered the beginnings of a cabin near the place. Which might have been exciting (the prospect of other people living somewhere close by!), if evidence hadn't pointed to it simply being a project of their two youngest family members. The tools laying about were marked, Dreadnaught, and all the lumber had been carried over from Mason's sawmill. So, the young couple was simply building a nest of their own. And doing quite the nice job of it, too.
Less than a week later, it began to snow.
Huge silent flakes floated down in the morning, and by late afternoon, there was already a blanket of white everywhere. As temperatures dropped, and activities began to shrink to inside projects, where it was warmer, Stella had a feeling she would like this season most of all. The loveliness from every window, the coziness of the wood stoves, and the wonderful closeness that came from everyone working and enjoying themselves, together.
Even Gerald, who had long since lost the cut-off serape he had worn constantly to keep himself warm, had become stronger and more tanned after weeks of working outside on the Mah-Bo II. Of course, it could have also had something to do with not taking thirty pills every day, too. He had stopped doing that after their last storm at sea, when he couldn't keep anything down for over three days. Only to discover he hadn't felt so good in years. Which, as often happens in such cases, led from one good thing to another. It started with him wanting to move some of his larger plants outside during their dormant season.
Voyage of the Dreadnaught: Four Stella Madison Capers Page 14