The Four Ms. Bradwells

by Meg Waite Clayton

  “I’m just here for the day, Matka,” I insisted. “For Mass and supper afterward.” I hadn’t told her I was coming. Afraid I’d lose my nerve.

  Matka and I walked to Holy Cross and sat through a Mass said in Polish. We made potato and cheese pierogi in the tiny kitchen of the tiny apartment that had been home my whole remembered life. We talked about how not-well the neighbors were doing with ten percent of Michigan unemployed. We talked about my classes. The articles we’d chosen for the Review. Interview season. Applications for clerkships. And Laney and Mia and Ginge.

  “Ginger, she is going home to Washington, Betsy?” Matka asked. She was always surprisingly fond of Ginger.

  “New York,” I said. “Caruthers, Smythe and Morgan. The firm we worked at this summer. She’s going back there.”

  “New York.” Matka shook her head, her thinning hair sprayed into utter stillness.

  “Matka …” I said. I didn’t know how to start, so I said “Matka” again.

  She set her fork down on her plate. I remember how sad it looked. The cheap stainless. The chipped stoneware. Things I’d never noticed until that summer I’d dined at every Long Island country club to which any partner at Caruthers, Smythe & Morgan belonged. Always on spotless tablecloths with silver and carved crystal and food presented as art.

  “I have a friend,” I said. “I was wondering … She thinks she … You were a doctor in Poland, right?”

  She touched worn fingers to worn cheeks. She picked up her cheap fork. Set it back on her plate. “This is Ginger,” she said.

  It would have broken her heart if I’d come to her saying I was pregnant. That the father was a partner I’d worked with that summer. That late one night when Ben and I were working on a case together he’d kissed me. That I’d kissed him back. That we’d gone to Los Angeles together on business. That he’d introduced me to Paul Newman at a party after a long day defending the deposition of a studio head client of his. That I’d had my own hotel room but after the party I went back to Ben’s Jacuzzi suite. We slept together the next week, too. In Houston. Again on business. And at the end of the summer he flew me to London for a long weekend of theater and expensive dinners. Strolls along the Thames. This time with only a carefully orchestrated story of the business we might claim should we be seen together by someone who knew one of us.

  I didn’t know anyone in London, of course. Ben was the one who knew people everywhere. Who knew the little boutiques on Bond Street in Mayfair. Who spent thousands of dollars on clothes and jewelry for me. He liked to dress me and I was surprised to find I liked to be dressed. Not lingerie so much as suits, dresses, bags, and shoes. One silky-soft tweed cost over a thousand pounds. A month’s wages for Matka. I told her I bought it on sale at Macy’s. I didn’t tell her Ben had insisted I have it because its mix of pale blue and gray and green matched my eyes.

  “No, not Ginger,” I told her.

  She wet her lips. Studied me over the cracked wood of our kitchen table for such a long time that I knew she must know. She must understand. I took a bite of potato pancake. Made myself swallow it so as to have an excuse to avoid her. Wondered in the silence if maybe Ginger knew about Ben and me. She’d worked in the same firm all summer. We’d lived together. Did she never suspect? But she was wrapped up in her own life. Busy stringing Ted along. She was almost never home to find out that I wasn’t either. And I had my history of innocence working for me, too. Ginger probably couldn’t imagine me having a flirtation, much less whatever it was Ben and I had. And Ben and I were discreet.

  “Elsbieta,” Matka said finally, “this I cannot do, you must know that. In my country, yes, this I can do, but here I am not doctor. Here, to practice my medicine is not allowed.”

  I wondered for a moment if she would have said something different if I’d said “yes, Ginger.” If I gave her a real face of a real girl in trouble, on whom she was turning her back.

  “Your friend, she will have somewhere else to go?” she asked.

  I made myself meet her lidded eyes. I made myself say, “It’s expensive, is the thing.”

  She frowned, her face weary and dark. “In my country, yes, this I can do,” she said, “but it is wrong for me here, it is against law for me here. I am American now, and I must be as America is, I cannot choose what is good here and leave what is not good. It is what is better in this country, Elsbieta: the rules apply to all the peoples. This I cannot throw away.”

  I nodded numbly, wanting to say, But you’re a good doctor. You would do this better than anyone. You know you ought to be a doctor here. Wanting to say, It’s me, Matka, it’s me. But I couldn’t make the words come out. Maybe over the phone I could have told her. But I couldn’t bear to witness the disappointment. Everything she gave up for me only to have me return her this.

  “Your friend, she will have somewhere else to go, Elsbieta?” she repeated.

  I traced a crack in the pottery. A thin line of raw stoneware splitting a yellow rose. “Yes, yes, I’m sure she will,” I said. “I’ll help her. We’ll find somewhere else.” Because I could see then that she didn’t know. She couldn’t imagine I could be the kind of daughter who would sleep with a man who didn’t love me the way my father had loved her.

  “To be leader, Elsbieta,” she said, “you must do what is right, even when it hurts you to do.” She searched my face then. I could feel her wanting to look to my waist and I thought maybe she could imagine. I wanted to scream at her. To say this wasn’t Poland and I didn’t have the money for an abortion. That if I went to the father for the money or if anyone but her did it there would always be the possibility that it would be discovered. That I would never be able to reach for anything for fear it would come out. I wanted to explain to her that even in America, especially in America, no woman who’d had an abortion would ever be appointed dogcatcher. Much less judge. But I didn’t say any of that. I only repeated that I’d help my friend think of something else. And I sat with her while we both pretended to finish our suppers without eating anything more.

  She insisted on driving me back to Ann Arbor. A long, silent drive. In front of the Division Street house she took my hand in hers. “This you must remember, Elsbieta,” she said. “To be leader you must lead, even when it will harm you. To be leader, you must always do what is right.” Then after a moment, “When you are baby, Betsy, before you are born, I play the zhaleika for you, even then. After your father disappears and I am pregnant with you, I play for you every night. You are learning this music even before you are baby. You begin to play, and at first I play with you. Then it is time for you to play and you go up on this stage alone. Do you remember this? Only eight years old, but you are on this stage at your school and I want to go with you, to play with you, but it is time for you to play on your own.” She reached over and touched my thick hair, my unlined cheek. “I am knowing it is time for you to play on your own, and still, I want to be playing with you. One person plays alone, it is one thing, but two plays together is so much more.

  “I am so proud of you, Elsbieta, when you are playing only with yourself.” The touch of her raw-skinned hand on mine. Her proud-Polish-mama smile. “Even though you miss half the notes,” she said with a gentle laugh, “I am so very proud. I am always be proud.

  “A child, she is blessing, Elsbieta. Everything is wrong sometimes and still a child she is blessing. Your friend, she must understand this before she is making decision.” She sighed, and she pulled me to her and kissed the top of my head. “Your friend, you tell her I give her money if this she must do. I give her money, I get money somewhere. But you tell her, you make her understand: It is hard thing to raise child alone, this I know. But this is nothing to how hard it is to let child go.”

  I ANGLED FOR the seat next to Beau in the skiff that Sunday night. Monday morning, technically. I admit now to wanting to sit next to him, although I wouldn’t have back then; I’d have claimed to be taking the front seat to avoid getting motion sick. But Mia seemed happy enough in
the seat next to Trey.

  He hurried us to sit. Fired up the pull-cord engine. The other boat was pulling away from the pier.

  Already, we were behind in something I hadn’t realized was a race.

  “Whoa, Nellie!” Beau’s large hands steadied my shoulders. I’d be in the bay if Trey hadn’t waited for me to sit before he opened up the throttle. I gripped the narrow plank seat lest I fall onto the skanky bottom of the boat as my hair whipped into my eyes.

  “Try straddling the seat unless you want to go for another swim,” Beau suggested. He glanced back at Mia already straddling the seat she shared with Trey. “A swim, not another swim.” A smile as wide as Ginger’s exploded from his beard. “Since that wasn’t you skinny-dipping off the pier, right?” He tapped my right knee and flipped his hand: I should throw my leg back so I’d face inward. Face him. I was glad I’d run a quick toothbrush over my teeth while Ginger and Trey were so long borrowing the second skiff. Glad of the soft night. The gentle starlight off the water made it dark enough that my acne wouldn’t look so bad. Doris-Day-moonlight gauze.

  Ginger stood in dark outline at the engine of the other boat. Her long hair slipped its barrette and whipped back in a surreal streak. She laughed and called out a taunt I couldn’t make out over the wind.

  Trey bellowed out from behind me, “Go right, sure, Skunky! You need a head start!” at a volume that hurt my ears at such close range.

  Ginger pushed the hair from her face and laughed again. Slowed her engine. Took a swallow from a flask as she let us round the pier and approach her boat. “Ready, set, go!” she called out. But she didn’t gun her engine. She slowed even more. Trey had to turn sharply to avoid her.

  She sped off. Gained several yards before we could correct course again.

  “Damn,” Trey swore. But something in his voice or his dark eyes or the way his body seemed sprung tight with energy left me sure he thrilled at Ginger’s getting the better of him.

  He gunned the engine again. The little boat dug into the water.

  Ginger’s boat swung straight at the darkened shore. The winter-dead land. All those dry reeds that would catch fire from the motor.

  She didn’t crash. She disappeared. Buzzing forward somewhere in the reeds.

  “Damn, you really want to take Boat Scrape Gut, Ginge?” Trey said to himself as he slowed the engine and eased us into the shoreline just where Ginger’s boat had disappeared.

  The narrow stream we entered wound through cattails standing higher than my head. Creatures rustled from their nests by Ginger’s boat stirred in the air.

  “Boat Scrape is one of the shallowest of the tide channels that riddle the island,” Beau explained. “Ginger is fearless. She’s grounded boats a dozen times—she broke her arm once—but it doesn’t slow her down.”

  Behind us the lights from Chawterley disappeared behind the dead reeds. The darkness seemed total. Even the moon was lost behind the clouds rolling in. It was scary dark. Foolish and exhilarating dark. Out in the middle of nowhere in a boat. I could barely see the shadow that was Beau sitting across from me now. How could Trey possibly see to steer?

  I reached out toward Beau to steady myself. Touched the damp wool of his sweater. He’d shed the slick polyester vest before we left Chawterley.

  “She raced a boat with a broken arm?” I said.

  He laughed. A lovely laugh full of the night and the winding slither of the boat in the shallow water. Laughter that left me understanding why Ginger was so fond of him. Why any of us Ms. Bradwells could tell when he telephoned at school from the lift in Ginger’s voice.

  “Dark enough for you?” he asked.

  I leaned forward. Maybe I would just kiss him. That was the champagne and the scotch talking. Of course it was. And the anonymous darkness. It all felt so good. The cool air. The sway of the boat in the moist night. The abandonment.

  We might drown out here, unfindable in the dark. A thought that ought to be terrifying but made me feel alive and sexy and wild.

  We passed through a tangle of spiderweb. It was all I could do not to spit away the bit of it I was sure was on my lips. I hadn’t been with a guy since that London trip with Ben. I hadn’t been with a guy before that summer, either. I’d had only the one forbidden entanglement. And that hadn’t ended well.

  The moon reemerged spotlight-in-the-darkness bright. Only to be blotted out by a flood of flashing light. Beau wiped spiderweb from his sweatered shoulder in the pulse of the lighthouse beacon. It stuck to his fingers. He dipped them into the water outside the boat.

  I’d have sworn the lighthouse was in the other direction. I looked right, trying to use the lights of Chawterley to get my bearings. But the only lights were to the left. The direction of town? But we had to be miles from town.

  “They went up Johan’s Creek,” Beau said to Trey.

  Trey took a swig from a flask and passed it to Mia. Said he was taking Bald Eagle Cut.

  “It was her left arm, the arm Ginger broke, so she could still steer,” Beau said to me. “And I swear to God she helped me push the boat out of the mud, and she didn’t say a word about the arm hurting. I had no clue until I woke the next morning to my father’s voice bellowing about whatever the hell Ginger had done to her arm.” He laughed again. “She swore she hadn’t been out because of course we weren’t supposed to be out running boats in the middle of the night. She claimed she must have fallen out of bed.” He shook his head. “Ginger makes anyone but Trey look like a lightweight gut-runner, and even Trey can’t keep up at night.”

  Trey tossed something from his pocket at Beau. It hit off his cheek and fell into the water.

  “But it’s true and you know it,” Beau said to Trey. “The only one who can beat Ginger is Max.”

  “And we all know Maxie McKee isn’t human,” Trey said. “His heart doesn’t pump any faster in Long Creek than it does when he’s sleeping in his sad and lonely little bed.”

  “Clever angling on your part, to get the three lightest of us, by the way,” Beau said. “I bet Ginger is carrying a hundred pounds more than we are. But you still can’t beat her. Certainly not at this speed.”

  I edged backward on the seat. Watched the dark stir of disrupted wildlife. Where was the lighthouse beacon now? Feeling the little confidence I’d taken from the law review billing and the fact that Trey had chosen me over Ginger and Laney shrink into my lack of sex appeal. I didn’t weigh much. That was why he’d chosen me. I wouldn’t be much of an inconvenience if I straddled the bench and didn’t fall overboard.

  “You need us to drop weight? I can empty my pockets,” I offered with my best you’re-supposed-to-laugh-at-this face. Not that anyone could see. “Except … Dang! I don’t have any pockets!”

  Beau laughed. “I could shave my beard, that would save us a few ounces.”

  “You could jump ship,” Trey suggested. “That’s, what, a hundred and sixty pounds?”

  “And the only PhD in the boat!” I said. “Now that’s a lot of weight.”

  Beau stood and made as if to leap from the boat just as we turned sharply left. He fell back on me. Caught his balance by hugging me. His beard soft on my cheek.

  “God, I’m sorry,” he said. “Are you okay? I’m sorry.”

  I was fine. Really, I was fine. Hoping he hadn’t noticed my heart trying to make a break for it through my chest wall.

  I pulled out my best sultry Mae West: “ ‘Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.’ ”

  He paused in his effort to untangle his limbs from mine to say, “I’m not that heavy, actually; I’m not a PhD yet.” He sat back, holding the side of the boat. “Ginger tells me you’re a pretty heavy type yourself. She says you’ll be on the Supreme Court someday.”

  I gripped the water-soaked wood more tightly as we swayed through the winding channel. “You can’t believe everything that girl says.”

  “Can’t you? I find she’s pretty perceptive about everyone but herself.”

  “Herself and your mother
,” Mia said from behind us.

  Beau’s smile grew wider as he looked at her. A little bit of gum line showed above his top teeth. “About everyone but herself and Mother,” he agreed. “But Mother isn’t any better about Ginger than Ginge is about her.”

  “And you?” Mia asked.

  “I’d say I’m pretty perceptive about them both,” Beau said.

  Mia pushed his shoulder gently. “I meant about yourself.”

  His gaze lingered on her for a moment. “I can usually recognize what I want,” he said.

  I looked away to a twinkle of lights ahead of us through a gap in the reeds. The house or the town or something else altogether? A ship out on the bay or even the faraway lights of the mainland shore?

  What the hell was it that Mia had that I didn’t? Why did the guys I liked always seem to go for her? She wasn’t cuter than me. She didn’t have a better figure. She wasn’t any smarter or any less smart.

  Beau, I thought, liked smart women. Like Ben did.

  “Look: a bald eagle!” Beau said.

  We all turned to see a shadow creature in the air above the reeds. A dark expanse of wings and a lighter head.

  “The only sea eagle native to the United States,” Beau said. “We get them nesting at this end of the island sometimes, because nobody lives here. They don’t much like to live near humans.”

  “We’ve woken him,” Mia said as the boat picked up speed.

  “Probably.” Beau’s eyes lingering on her again.

  Maybe she did things sexually that I didn’t? Maybe guys knew this somehow? Maybe the way she held herself or the way she moved or some expression in her eyes let them know she would give them whatever they wanted. She hadn’t had sex with anyone but that one guy she’d dated in college and Andy. But here she was engaged to Andy and still flirting with Beau. Or not so much flirting as capturing his attention without seeming to try.