“Hello, Nicholas,” Frank said jovially. “Hello, dear wife.” He raised a glass of wine in their direction. “I have found something utterly wonderful.”
25
White Hill, Michigan—October 1937
One morning she saw how the first autumn had changed
The splayed repeated figures on the ground
Making them leaves, and not the shadow of leaves.
~ Louise Bogan (1897–1970), “The Flume”
From the window of the Stevens Hotel dining room, Edith Evans watched her son part ways with his wife and head toward the hotel. Bernard and Mary didn’t touch or seem to speak good-byes, but this didn’t surprise her. What had surprised her was the animated way the two had talked and laughed during the first few months of their marriage.
Mary. A small sadness crossed Edith’s mind as she recalled the way Bernard had said Mary’s name when he first spoke of her. He had possessed an interest in girls for years but had never been smitten like this. Taking care of her and the children they would have together, that had been what mattered to him—and look how things had turned out.
The girl had been breathtakingly beautiful at the wedding. It wasn’t the first time Edith had met her, but it was the first time she’d had such an extended opportunity to assess her. Bernard had married her so quickly after their meeting that Edith had had to pay extra money for the hastened completion of a proper wedding gown. The girl had nothing, no skill to sell, no mother, and a father who lived hand-to-mouth. The pitiful man was fading from life even at the wedding, in Edith’s opinion—barely forty years old but unable to sustain himself, let alone his daughter.
And the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Whatever constitutional weakness had pervaded Leonard Walker’s being and compromised his health, it was there in his daughter, too. In her case, manifesting as a weak mind. The knife incident proved it. Slashing your husband’s face with a knife because you’re out of your mind on morphine. God help us.
“Hello, Bernard,” Edith said as Bernard approached her table from the front door.
“Mother.” He nodded and met her eyes briefly, huffed an exhale, and sat down. He flagged the bartender and ordered a beer. “Damn hot summer.”
“Start your workday earlier.”
“I start early enough.”
“Is the sun any different this year?”
Bernard ignored his mother’s question and remained silent until the bartender came around with his beer. He raised it to his lips and drank a third of it down.
“Well, let’s discuss the important matters right away,” she said.
“I don’t know if getting rid of Mary is gonna be the right thing for me, Mother.”
“I understand, Bernard. But it’s important to have a plan in place. It’s hard to say how bad things could get.” Edith leaned across the table and spoke in a fierce whisper. “After all, you never could have predicted she would go at you with a knife. And she could have blinded you. Killed you!”
“I know.” His voice was taut with irritation.
“It’s for her sake as well as yours.”
“I know, I know. You’ve said these things already, twenty, thirty times.”
“And she just doesn’t matter. You’ll find another woman to take care of your needs at home.”
“There are plenty of women, maybe. But Mary…” After a moment he shrugged.
“We need to get to the point and be brief. Your father expects me. Is she coming back here to walk home with you?”
Bernard looked out the window and down Water Street, shaking his head no.
“Let me see that injury.” Edith raised her hand toward his face, and Bernard turned his left cheek toward her for a moment, then brushed her arm away.
“It’ll heal.”
Edith swallowed hard and raised her chin. “The scar will be a ragged, terrible one, Son.”
He let his hand fall with a slap to the table. “Okay, so what do you want me to do about it?”
“I am only saying that you should prepare your mind for that. And place the blame squarely where it belongs.”
“It’s the habit. The morphine.”
“She is responsible for her own actions, regardless.”
“I try to keep the stuff from her. I don’t know how she gets hold of more.” Bernard gazed around the room, anywhere but at his mother.
“The Devil always has ways. She can blame it on the injury, but that was over a year ago. It’s nothing but an excuse. She is simply weak. Like her father.”
“I should hit her. Teach her what she doesn’t seem to know.”
“And start a cycle that ends up in more trouble for you?”
“A man shouldn’t put up with the kind of things I put up with.” Bernard finished his beer. He ground his teeth together and shook his head slowly.
“She’s a sick woman.” Edith watched the rise of a temper she was intimately familiar with in her men, and she wanted to protect him from it. “Put her in an institution with others of her kind. Safely far away from your life and our business.”
“Maybe I should just turn her out on the street.” Now Bernard looked directly into his mother’s face. “Let her figure out how good she’s got it. But I can’t stand the thought of another man having her. No, I cannot stand it. I’d rather see her dead.”
“Bernard.” Edith’s voice rose in warning as she glanced around the room.
“It’s true.”
“I understand. But you must be careful with your words around other people. And certainly with your actions. In public, you keep quiet. She isn’t worthy of such powerful attachment. She could ruin your life.”
For more than a minute, Edith watched her son’s mind follow sordid thoughts and his face twitch with angry jealousy. When at last he spoke, his voice was vengeful against an imagined rival. “All right. What do I have to do?”
Edith inhaled deeply. “Protocol at the State Hospital for the Insane requires that she be examined by two psychiatrists. Your story about her behavior the night of the stabbing, as well as this addiction, will be enough to have her committed. I have connections, and we can get it done quickly.”
“What do you mean, connections?”
“In college I knew a young man who is one of the doctors there now.” Edith was proud of her year of college at Michigan State University and of the friendships she had managed to retain, but she instantly regretted explaining the acquaintance that way. She always paid a price for the details she revealed about her feelings or her past to her sons and husband. “You don’t need to mention that doctor to your father. You know how he is.”
Bernard gave something like a laugh as the bartender came to the table with a pitcher of beer and refilled Bernard’s glass. “Father and I don’t talk about you, Mother.”
Edith’s neck grew hot, and her sympathy for her son thinned somewhat, as it did eventually whenever she spent enough time with him. “That’s just as well. I will tell Dr. Davison that you will be bringing Mary in soon, and things will go quickly from there. You will have your life and freedom back, and you can move on.”
“How am I supposed to even get her into the car?”
“Watch for another time when she’s just as affected as she was when she stabbed you. By your accounts, it shouldn’t take long.”
Bernard drank a few sips of beer and leaned back, more relaxed, with a slightly amused expression. “And while she’s gone, maybe I’ll look around, find some incriminating things she’s written down. Put her in her place for good; make it clear who’s boss.”
Edith studied her son’s expression and saw that he had not thought things through completely yet. In a firm tone she hoped would not revive his anger, she said, “Make no mistake, Bernard. She may never come back. The point is for you to move on. Without her.”
He gazed at
his mother for a few seconds, then shrugged and looked out the window, as if seeking Mary’s form on Water Street. “Fine. As long as I don’t have to wonder where she is. Or who the hell she’s with.”
26
White Hill, Michigan—April 1999
I have forgotten which of us it was
That hurt his wing.
I only know his limping flight above us in the blue air
Toward the sunset cloud
Is more than I can bear.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950), “There at Dusk I Found You”
Lydia was speechless. The clutter still lying around in the barn looked like remnants of a nightmare, and the staring faces of Frank and his visitors all seemed to taunt her with secretive smiles.
“Don’t you want to know what I have here?” Frank held up an old volume of Sara Teasdale’s poetry collection Strange Victory, his face smug. A few seconds of silence followed.
“Well, of course,” she said, pushing her hair back around her ears. “Good evening, everyone.”
“This is Dr. Richard Albert from the English Department. I don’t believe you’ve officially met,” Frank said, gesturing to a stout, fortysomething man to his left with wire-rimmed glasses and piercing eyes. He nodded to Lydia. “You know George Vanderkley, of course, and Drew. This is Shane Harding, one of Drew’s graduate students, Lilly Schmidt from the Carson library. And Sylvia Gilmore.”
Lydia nodded to each one, unable to smile. “So what have you found, Frank?”
“I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you.” Frank chuckled. “It’s really something, though.” He perused the end pages of the book. “Nicholas, you’re going to be pleased. After all these years of searching, it’s here at last.”
Lydia looked over her shoulder at Nicholas, whose eyes seemed especially round and bright.
“Well? Just tell us!” she said, her passion for Mary Walker’s work overshadowing her discomfort.
“This modest volume, Strange Victory, Sara Teasdale’s posthumous collection, contains a fascinating addition to it. Lilly here, and Dr. Albert, feel optimistic that these handwritten, original lines of poetry scribed in the back are authentic.” Frank nodded his head, smiling.
“Well, not by Teasdale, obviously,” Lydia joked, and she heard a murmur of chuckles.
“No, not Teasdale. Who do you think they might be written by?” Frank’s happy face contained a vindictive shadow especially for her.
“Why don’t you just tell me?” Lydia said, finding it difficult to suppress her rising anger.
“Why don’t you guess? It’s fun!” Frank set the book on his lap and locked his hands together as he gazed at her.
“I don’t want to bore your guests, Frank.”
“Come on, Dad,” Nicholas said quietly.
“Nicholas, aren’t you pleased? Brad Kramer’s boxes of musty old books from the Tavern shop have always been disappointingly dull, but not this one!”
Drew, sitting to Frank’s right, put her hand on his arm, looking sympathetically at Lydia. “He did the same thing to us, Lydia.” She gave a burst of laughter. “Although it’s pretty obvious where his literary love lies! Who else would he be this excited about?”
“Now, Drew,” Frank said, feigning displeasure. “Say nothing more. You’re giving it away.”
Lydia took a couple of steps forward into the circle, accidentally bumping the graduate student’s arm so that wine slopped onto his pants.
“Just let me take a look,” she said, extending her arm.
“Oh, no, no. Can’t risk it. Got to hang on to this item,” he said, lifting a bottle of wine to fill his glass. “We were just discussing how to handle it. Such a small, precious treasure. Wouldn’t want it to be carried off by a doubting Thomas.”
“He’s very possessive about his poet,” the graduate student, Shane, said sardonically, pressing a paper napkin to the wine stain on his leg.
Frank’s eyes gleamed. “Shane, hush now!”
“Frank, pass the wine, would you?” Drew said, and he handed her the bottle. She filled her glass and held the bottle across toward Dr. Albert, who declined.
Lydia stepped back and put her hands in her jacket pockets.
“Nicholas, I bet you can guess. You’ve always believed it would happen, haven’t you?” Frank said, giving his son a wide smile. “Come on.”
Nicholas crossed his arms over his chest. “So…Mary Stone Walker?”
“Excellent! Cheers! You’ve been listening all these years!” He grabbed the bottle of wine from Drew, pulled another glass up from the floor, and said, “Give the young man a drink.”
“Frank,” Lydia protested.
“It’s time to celebrate, dear wife. No harm in some enlivening spirits.” He filled the glass half full and passed it around to Nicholas.
“I don’t like wine, Dad,” Nicholas said.
“I’ll handle it.” Shane, who had offered the glass up to Nicholas, poured its contents into his own.
Lydia’s thoughts spun. Could it be? Unknown lines inscribed into a book? It could be authentic if Lilly Schmidt thought that it was real. She’d heard of this quiet, prematurely gray young woman who was often called upon throughout Michigan to examine documents, although as far as Lydia knew, Lilly’s professional training didn’t extend beyond library science.
“Lydia, you’ve had so much to say about this issue recently,” Frank chided. “And here you are without words! I’m surprised.”
She hoped he would read the lines out loud, but his attitude was so antagonistic toward her that she didn’t want to risk further embarrassment by asking. Surely this caustic mood would pass if she left him alone with his cronies. She imagined him bringing the volume into the house later, after the guests were gone, brimming with excitement to share it with her. She would give him a piece of her mind about his rudeness after that.
“I suppose I won’t be able to persuade you to guess what year this was written, since you’re being such a spoilsport. But that might be the most exciting thing of all.”
Lilly Schmidt and George Vanderkley nodded.
“Thrilling,” Lilly murmured, smiling. “You and Frank seem to have been on the right trail all these years!”
“Yes, I was in it for the long haul.” Frank chuckled.
Lydia watched him, awaiting a look of acknowledgment, a word about her own efforts.
“The mystery goes on,” Shane said. “And on and on.”
Drew leaned in toward the center of the circle, her hands tense and excited. “If she wrote this in 1940, if it’s authentic, and it was found in Michigan, then perhaps she sailed up the Michigan coast from the pier that night.”
“If it was even her that old Ambrose Smith saw on the pier,” Frank said with one eyebrow cocked, lifting his wineglass. “This opens up all kinds of possibilities. Because I think you’re right. She must have stayed in the state. At least for a while. Obviously she didn’t drown. What do we really know from Smith’s account? Almost nothing.”
Lydia watched as the conversation knitted back into a tight circle of speculation that she could see Frank did not want her to join. Without another word, she rushed out of the barn. Nicholas followed a few steps behind her.
“Mom!” he called softly. She ignored him, pulled open the back door of the house, hurried inside, and threw off her coat as if it were some nasty, clinging creature. Nicholas opened the door as she leaned against the kitchen counter, her face burning.
“Mom!” he said again. “What’s wrong?”
“That was humiliating.” She fought back a wave of angry tears.
“Dad’s just being Dad,” he said with a note of pleading. “He’ll come around.”
“Won’t even pretend to act civil to his own wife in front of his colleagues. Asinine.” She almost felt faint with rage and with fea
r that she did not fully understand. Would he push her away completely? Now that Frank had finally gotten what he wanted, would he forget their bond through all of the years when she had patiently attended his outlandish excuse for a career?
“He was just showing off.”
The back door opened again, and Nicholas and Lydia both whipped their heads toward the sound. Shane stepped inside, wiped his feet lazily on the mat, and looked from one to the other of them.
“Got chips or something?” he asked. “Frank sent me to ask.”
Lydia wanted to refuse, but her manners were too automatic. “Nicholas,” she said, “would you see what we have and help this young man, please?”
Shane whistled a breathy melody, letting the notes trail off as Nicholas opened and shut cupboard doors, and said, “I’m sorry to say it, Mrs. Carroll, but your husband’s an ass sometimes.” Shane’s expression was rueful. “Well, actually, most of the time, if you ask me.”
She stared at him, unsmiling, and he stared back. Not a single retort came to her mind. She heard chips jingling into a bowl, then Nicholas set it, along with a jar of salsa, on the counter in front of Shane.
“He’s bonkers about this poet. She’s not great enough to spend your whole life on, as you probably know. And hey, let’s face it…” He pulled his head back, held out his hands, and lightened his expression flirtatiously. “There’s no way she was as pretty as you are.”
Lydia rolled her eyes. Even this kid who barely knew her or Frank had picked up on the fact that Walker was Lydia’s competition.
“Wait till you’re an old fart like he is, Shane. You might prefer phantoms to real women yourself.”
Shane gave a hoot of laughter and waited, hands on the bowl of chips, for her to meet his eyes. “Thanks,” he said, smiling. He backed up to the door and left.
“Jeez, what a jerk,” Nicholas muttered.
The Lake and the Lost Girl Page 22