Disheartened, she headed back to the office. August was slow. In the city, in the newsroom. It felt as if the world had adjusted its pace to suit the long, hot days. The Orioles, in the hunt for the pennant, generated some buzz, as did the upcoming primary, which would decide most races in Baltimore and even the state, given the Democratic party’s dominance. George Mahoney, the long-shot Democratic candidate for governor, walked so much as he canvassed that he showed his worn soles to reporters. In August, that was a story, the soles of a politician’s shoes. Had it really been so naive to think that she could write about Cleo Sherwood and Ezekiel Taylor?
Even the mail to Mr. Helpline had slowed. The complaints that did arrive were pettier than ever, if such a thing was possible. Traffic-light issues, people who wanted Charles Street to go back to being two-way. Occasionally, there was a misplaced missive seeking advice on love problems. These were forwarded to Dear Abby’s Chicago office, but Maddie’s heart ached a little for the confused correspondents. One had to be extremely troubled in love to reach out to Mr. Helpline by mistake.
Men don’t care about love, she grumbled to herself as she walked. Men thought love didn’t matter, it wasn’t news. Maybe they were right. Men deceiving women in love was the oldest story in the world.
And there, on the sunbaked August pavement, Maddie felt a chill unlike any she had known. Her legs shook so hard that she had to find a bus bench to sit down and catch her breath. Thrust eighteen years back in time—what had taken her there? Why was she thinking about this now?
She had been not quite twenty, married to Milton, the honeymoon phase over, money tight, but life pleasant except for the fact that she could not get pregnant. People said it was normal, that she was worrying too much, but Maddie had a specific fear and was terrified to tell her doctor about it. What if she never conceived? If she wasn’t a mother, what would she be? She had put all her money—her life, not even two decades of it—on this bet, on being Milton’s wife and partner. A homemaker, but one could not make a home for only two people. She watched the carriages multiplying around her modest neighborhood. Once the baby was born, she and Milton would leave the apartment for a house, life would finally begin. She had to have a baby, babies.
It was as she grappled with this fear and anxiety that a friend mentioned she had seen what appeared to be a debutante’s portrait, an amazing likeness of Maddie, for sale at a local gallery. Maddie went to see it, and sure enough, there was the portrait Allan Durst Sr. had painted not even three years ago, the summer she was seventeen. It hurt to look at that painting. For one thing, she had to admit to herself that he was a terribly mediocre artist. The brushwork was proficient, nothing more, lacking any spark or wit now that she was not gazing at it through a love-struck haze.
And it hurt to realize that the girl in the painting had ceased to exist when the painting was finished, that she could never be retrieved. The girl that Milton could never have, that no one could have. The prize that Allan Sr. had insisted on having for himself.
Maddie asked the gallery’s owner how the painting had come to be in his possession. She might have implied that the provenance was questionable, that it was clearly a portrait of her that had gone missing from her parents’ home at some point. “If I could just get in touch with the owner, I’m sure we could straighten this out.” She had assumed it would be Allan’s wife, forcing him to purge his studio of his trophies. But it was Allan himself, and the address listed was in New York, on the Upper East Side, as she always suspected.
Two weeks later, she took the bus to New York, telling Milton she was going on a B’nai B’rith trip to see Carousel, that she would be staying over at a midtown hotel, sharing a room with Eleanor Rosengren. Lie on top of lie on top of lie, and the whole edifice would crumble if Milton ever thought to say anything to Eleanor or her husband. But Maddie knew by then that he would not. He was simply not interested in her day-to-day life. He, too, was anxious for a child and took it personally that Maddie could not get pregnant.
Maddie stood outside the address she had for Allan. It was April, yet it was snowing. She had a book with her, as if that would provide an adequate excuse for standing on a snowy New York corner. Eventually, Allan came out, hatless. He looked his age now, which was forty-four. He had always looked his age, actually—it was just that she couldn’t see it when she was seventeen. He was attractive, though. She had not been wrong about that.
She planted herself in his path, ready to exclaim how small the world was. But the moment her eyes met his, she could not pretend. She began to cry, and not in a pretty way. Without a word, he took her by the elbow and led her to his apartment. He fixed her a strong drink, put together a late lunch for her out of things in the icebox, made small talk. She attempted to explain about the painting, tried to recover her pride by claiming she had been contacted by the gallery owner, who was nervous about whether he had the right to sell it. Allan’s patient support of her subterfuge made her feel worse in a way. He said that his wife was in Mexico, because she had decided she could not paint in New York in the cold-weather months. Allan Jr., of course, was at college. Yale.
Of course? Oh, yes, he had gone to Yale, too. He had mentioned it often.
“My son is still a boy,” he mused. “And yet you, the same age, are every inch a woman.” He looked at, but did not comment upon, the gold band on her hand.
“You made me a woman.”
“No, darling, you were a woman before I met you. And I wanted you to enjoy, at least once in your life, what it would be like to use that body as it was meant to be used. A woman such as you should be a king’s mistress. For a summer, I could give you that experience.”
“So you were a king?”
He had laughed at that. “Oh, Maddie, I know I’m a cad. I’m a terrible person. I tried to tell you that all along. You were beautiful, you wanted me, I was helpless. I’m sure it was some Freudian battle with Allan, a desire to displace him, to assert myself as the patriarch. But I won’t apologize for any of it. And you, in your heart of hearts, know you should be thankful. Admit it—whatever you have now, it’s not the same.”
“It’s better,” she said.
“Don’t lie.”
“I’m not.” She wasn’t.
“Look, I’m not saying I have some level of technique in lovemaking that no other man can match. But what we did was sensual, we abandoned ourselves. You can’t have that in a marriage.”
She wanted to prove him wrong. And strangely, illogically, the only way to do that was to go to bed with him. They defiled his marital bed, lying in sight of his wife’s work. (Which was, she saw now, exceptional and accomplished. She wished she could afford it.) The sex was fun, athletic, but Allan seemed pale and wispy after Milton’s comforting bulk. She had vanquished him.
The very next night, less than an hour after stepping off the bus, she made love to Milton with a passion and a confidence that so delighted him he suggested she treat herself to more theater trips.
Nine months and two weeks later, Seth was born, an enormous child, almost ten pounds. She never doubted he was Milton’s. He looked exactly like his father from the minute he emerged.
Sixteen years later, sitting on a bench in downtown Baltimore, she still had no reason to doubt Seth’s paternity. Making love with Allan Durst Sr. had not been a mistake that time. She had broken his spell, and that was why she could finally conceive with Milton. Given how easily she had gotten pregnant the summer she was seventeen, she had expected it to be easy at twenty, too. But Seth was to be the first and last pregnancy she carried to term.
It was only now, twenty years later, that she saw how close to disaster she had flown, how easily her life could have been upended, by their affair and even the one-time coupling in New York. Why had she taken such risks? At least Allan was wrong. Her sensuality was not a fleeting thing, a gift he bestowed on her for one brief season. It had always been hers, it was hers now. If she ever did marry again, when she had the luxury of choosing
for herself, she would know that kind of passion in marriage. It had to be possible.
She tried never to think about the ghost of a child left behind in the basement office of the doctor that Allan Sr. had found for her the summer she was seventeen, how her heart felt as if it folded in half when anyone said it was a shame that Seth had to grow up an only child. Milton might have forgiven her for being with another man before marriage, but what happened in that doctor’s office when she was seventeen would be something he could never accept. Still, she had been punished for her sins, had she not? Only the one son when she had wanted a houseful of children, at least three, at least one daughter. She could have been such a good mother to a daughter.
Even good girls make mistakes when they’re in love. But they don’t deserve to die for them. Maddie had gotten out alive. Cleo Sherwood hadn’t.
August 1966
August 1966
She called in sick the next day. Her probationary period was over, she was entitled. She was not sure what would happen if it was discovered that she was not, in fact, sick, but she didn’t worry about getting caught. No one from the Star was going to be lingering on Auchentoroly Terrace, watching to see Mr. Sherwood leave for work. Waiting for the coast to clear, she thought, taking her post just before eight a.m. Her mind picked at the origin of the phrase, jumping to the Longfellow poem about Paul Revere she had memorized as a child. She then thought about Edward R. Murrow’s sonorous voice—“This is London”—those broadcasts that had led her to the radio club, her decision to join the school newspaper—so many seemingly insignificant moments, yet each one was building toward this life, her real life at last. Go look for Tessie Fine, her mother had said. She had and now she was here, sitting at a bus stop in a Negro neighborhood, conspicuous as—she still couldn’t find the right comparison. At any rate, she stood out.
She sat on the bus bench on the park side of Auchentoroly Terrace, the sun on her shoulders, marveling at the fact that her mother had gone to school on this very street sixty-some years ago, and Milton’s family had lived nearby until his father’s death in 1964. The only sure thing was time’s passing.
Shortly after eight thirty a.m., Mr. Sherwood left the apartment. She panicked for a moment. What if he were to walk to this very bus stop? She should have planned for that.
Luckily, he headed west. He wore some kind of uniform, a green one-piece. Gas station worker? Janitor? She realized she had no idea what he did.
Even with Mr. Sherwood out of the apartment, she still didn’t want to knock on the door. The children would be there, the boys, possibly Cleo’s sister and brothers. Eunetta, she reminded herself. Don’t call her Cleo.
Summer would be over soon. It was almost eight months since she had left Milton, and they had made little progress in the divorce. She had thought he would accept the inevitability of their marriage’s end when she found this job and it appeared she no longer needed his money. Only she did need his money. She couldn’t live like this forever, scraping by week after week. How long would this drag on? Would it drag on like this summer day, waiting to see if Mrs. Sherwood would leave her apartment?
A marriage can drag on forever, she thought, but it’s a rare day when a mother with small children doesn’t have to leave her home, if only to maintain her sanity. Little boys drink a lot of milk, eat a lot of food.
She was right. Slightly before lunchtime, Mrs. Sherwood emerged, headed south. Maddie gave her a head start of a block, then trailed behind her, hanging back when she entered the corner grocery. When she came out holding a single bulging bag, Maddie was waiting.
“Can I help you with that?” she asked. She knew she would be refused, but it seemed nice to ask.
“I’m fine,” Mrs. Sherwood said, shifting the bag in her arms, shifting her glance to the sidewalk.
Maddie fell in step beside her.
“Did Eunetta confide in you?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.” Eyes still down, as if she were playing the old game. Step on a crack, break a mother’s back.
“Did she tell you she was in love? Did she talk about him?”
“Which time? My daughter fell in love a lot, ma’am. Those two boys, my grandsons—that was love, too.”
Too.
“So she had fallen in love again. Did she talk about him?”
“Not with me, no.”
“But you must have known. That she was with Ezekiel Taylor. A mother always knows.”
Maddie did not believe a word of what she was saying. Her mother had never had the slightest inkling about Allan Sr. If she had—well, her family would have found whatever the Jewish equivalent was to a convent and locked Maddie away.
“I’m not a stupid woman, Miz Schwartz. I know what those clothes had in common.”
Maddie didn’t. Did that make her a stupid woman?
“He gave them to her?”
“They all fit her perfectly, even though the sizes on the labels didn’t match. Fit her like a glove.”
Maddie thought of the shape of the woman she had seen behind the lace curtain. Imploring her—commanding her—to leave. Tall. Not fat, but broader than slinky Cleo. She wondered if Taylor had gone so far as to pilfer some of his wife’s clothes and have them altered to fit Cleo.
“Was it serious between them?”
“He has a wife. How serious could it have been?”
“What do you think?”
“My daughter’s dead. That’s serious. That’s as serious as it gets.”
She had managed the trick of falling back a few paces, so she did not appear to be walking with Maddie. Mrs. Sherwood doesn’t want to be seen with me, Maddie thought in wonder. Was she afraid word would get back to her husband? Or was Maddie simply an embarrassment? Were there tears in her eyes? Step on a crack, break a mother’s heart. She had a block left to get this woman to open up, to trust her, to let her in. Not back into the apartment, she knew she was forever barred from there. But to let her into their lives, let her know the story of Cleo.
“Tell me about the last time you saw Eunetta. Please? I’m a mother too. I understand.”
Mrs. Sherwood sighed, shifting the bag to her hip.
“She brought the boys toys, which made no sense. It wasn’t even a week after Christmas and there she was, with two new trucks. She spoiled them so. Brought them things, when all they wanted was her. My husband says I spoiled her, but I didn’t. She was blazing to do something, be someone. All I tried to do was not get in the way.”
“Is it possible she knew she was in trouble? That she knew someone wanted her dead?”
Mrs. Sherwood stumbled on the raised lip between two squares of pavement. Step on a crack.
“No,” she said. “She said she might take a trip, but she’d let me know if she did. When a little time went by and I didn’t hear from her—I didn’t worry at first. She was careless that way. Then I got to thinking—she gave me a jacket of hers that I always liked.” A pause. “I said, ‘There’s no way that’s going to fit me, your arms are so long.’ But it fit me. So she’d had it altered, just for me. Said it was a late Christmas gift.”
“Mrs. Sherwood—why would someone kill Eunetta?”
“Doesn’t have to be a why, does there? Or if there is a why, it started so long ago, before any of us could know, or see where things were headed. She wasn’t a bad girl. But she spoke her mind. When you are very, very pretty, you start to think you can get away with so much. But I guess you knew that, too.”
Knew? There was something a little barbed about how quickly Mrs. Sherwood had anointed Maddie with the power of beauty, only to imply it was past.
“Did you ever meet him? Ezekiel Taylor?”
“No. There was no reason. I wasn’t going to be his mother-in-law, no matter what Eunetta thought.” She snorted. “That would have been something, to have a son-in-law older ’n me.”
So there it was. Ezekiel Taylor was Cleo’s boyfriend, her mother said so, and Cleo had believed he might become her husban
d. Would that scuttle his political ambitions? No, because as Maddie now knew, it was not considered news if a man running for office had a young girlfriend on the side.
But what if the girlfriend would not be silenced, what if she threatened to make a fuss?
The status quo relied on women’s playing by the rules of a game they could never win. Cleo Sherwood’s own mother said the only thing to do when Cleo wanted something was to get out of her way. Could Cleo Sherwood truly have wanted Ezekiel Taylor, older than her own parents? She might, at the very least, have wanted the life of a rich man’s wife, or a state senator’s wife.
As they reached the steps of the Sherwood apartment, the sister, Alice, was waiting outside.
“Mama, I told you I needed to go to work—” She broke off, stared angrily at Maddie. “What do you want?”
“Nothing,” Maddie said.
August 1966
August 1966
She bided her time. She was serenely, bizarrely confident that the world would provide her the opportunity she needed. She felt full of energy, even when nights with Ferdie meant she got only four, five hours’ sleep. Pushing back against August’s doldrums, she worked harder than ever, wrapping up her work by three, then dropping by the city desk to tell Cal Weeks she was available if he needed help.
Lady in the Lake Page 22