Enraptured, I sank down on the brass bed. An electric kettle nestled against the forget-me-not blue dish of teabags on the coffee table under the narrow paned windows hung with angel wing curtains.
Side-stepping the luggage, Ben joined me on the bed and unwound my hair.
“Shouldn’t we unpack?” I asked virtuously.
“Later!” He drew me down upon the cross-stitched quilt.
“Are you sure you’re up to…. taking a nap?” I turned my lips to his, but held them tantalizingly at bay.
“What?”
The glints of sunlight gold in his eyes turned me weak and at the same time all-powerful. “You seemed a bit off colour back at the airport. Remember?”
“You’re right.” He slid my jacket off my shoulders, twirled it on one finger and sent it into a free spinning arc, to land on the petticoat shade of the bedside lamp. “Time for some physical therapy.”
“Let’s not overdo things,” I warned. “Must have you in tip-top shape for the Mangés.”
He was undoing the buttons of my blouse. “To hell with the Mangés.”
Instantly the room darkened. There came a rasping sound as of the wind gathering for a storm. My eyes were closed and he was breathing hard.
Sometimes I had trouble believing I was the woman who had been wearing a marked down sticker when Ben took her off the shelf and dusted her off. He was so incredible! Everything about him impeccably groomed, down to his long lashes. At that moment I would have promised him anything short of agreeing to name the baby Esau. Turning my head on the pillow I hoped my hair would spill about my shoulders in the manner of the heroine of Love’s Last Lament. But, true to form, the rubber band confining my torrid locks refused to snap. And my legs didn’t writhe between satin sheets because the Mulberry Inn didn’t go in for anything so vulgar. I had to make do with kicking off my shoes and rubbing a foot against Ben’s.
The scent of cloves receded; the feather mattress embraced our bodies. For some weeks I had not been myself matrimonially speaking, but now the spice of his aftershave, the rasp of his manly chin, the lingering dexterity of his hands upon every button of my blouse brought back the sublime ecstasy of knowing I was loved for something other than my mind.
My lips toyed with his.
“You drive me insane with desire,” he whispered.
“Likewise,” I murmured.
Yes, it was all very lovely, but afterward … well, I would have been failing as a tourist had I continued lying there, the holiday ticking away, while I gazed into his eyes.
Semi-respectably dressed in my aqua and sea foam lace negligee (purchased as a last fling before giving myself over to maternity bras and smocks with bumble bees on the pockets), I suggested we get our first taste of American culture.
“You want to go out and tour the U.S.S. Constitution?”
“No.” I readjusted a loose end of the Laura Ashley sheet he wore with such fetching machismo. “I want to watch television.”
“Very well, but remember you only get three wishes.” He waved his remote control wand. Amazing! The dry sink in the corner turned into a television set. The picture slid around as though greased. The words Melancholy Mansion had leaped upon the screen.
“Looks like your cup of hemlock, Ellie.”
“My mother had a part in this film.”
“You never told me.” He touched my hair.
“I’ve never seen it.” I pressed a hand over his mouth. “She gave me a choice of this or Bambi.”
A surge of surflike music holding undercurrents of tidal terror. A swirl of mist, momentarily twitched away—in the manner of a magician’s hanky—to reveal a full moon, hovering above a house of finest Gothic Horror design, rising up out of a body of water—a river or perhaps a lake. A crashing of cymbals, the scarred front door lunges inward, and the viewer is swept into a wainscotted hall of magnificent gloom. All in glorious black and white.
My breath caught when the imperious butler, complete with patent leather hair and penciled moustache, descended the stairs, a candle held aloft.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he intoned, his voice dripping with gore, “I regret to be the bearer of inclement tidings.” His lips crept into a travesty of a smile, emphasizing his unearthly pallor. “The master is dead of unnatural causes, and the will is as full of holes as cheese.”
A shifty-eyed hush from the recipients of this news—a matriarch, who is clearly a man with eyes sharp as hatpins; a stout bespectacled schoolboy; and a bubble-head blonde fan dancer in working clothes, doing a half-hearted bump-and-grind while tearing a small piece of paper into confetti.
“That’s your mother?” Ben whistled.
I shushed him. “No. Hers was just a non-speaking bit part in the chorus line scene. Don’t let’s miss …”
Too late. Melancholy Mansion faded out, to be replaced by a close-up of a greyhaired, broad-shouldered man with TV interviewer regulation features.
“Good evening. I’m Harvard Smith and this is Talk Time. What you just saw was a scene from one of actress Theola Faith’s most popular films. We have in the studio with us this evening her daughter Mary Faith, author of the newly released, bestseller, Monster Mommy, an exposé of the chilling childhood she experienced at the hands of the woman known to millions as Kitten Face, the sexy comedienne who during the fifties and sixties paid the rent of movie houses across the country.”
The cameras shifted across the table, past two glasses and a water jug, to the woman who had readers turning pages on land and in the air, a woman with a rubber stamp smile and cookie-cutter features. Hair tailored into a French twist, she sported wing-tipped glasses. Her age was forty and fibbing.
“Thank you, Harvard.” Her woolly voice complemented the double-breasted trouser suit and bow tie. Picking up a pencil, she put it down. “As your guest this evening, I take the opportunity to reassure any of my mother’s fans who may be listening that I feel pain for their disillusionment. Please believe me”—her face softened with the quivering of her mouth—“I did not write Monster Mommy to pay Theola Faith back for the years of neglect—the cocktail parties in the bathtub, Father Christmas coming down the chimney wearing only soot.”
“The chicken noodle soup game shocked me, Mr. Unshockable.” Interviewer Harvard solicitously handed her a glass of water.
Mary Faith set it down. “Through my book, which was sheer migraine to write, I am reaching out to the woman who for years denied my existence, passing me off as her maid’s daughter, keeping me a virtual prisoner in a plush Hollywood mansion. To her, I say, Mommy, it is not too late. You can change. You can become a human being. If—when—you do, I’ll be waiting, arms outstretched. I won’t ask my father’s name, I won’t ask why you had me dressed as a boy until I was six and put my best doll down the garbage disposal. All I ask is three little words—‘I’m sorry, baby.’ ”
Interviewer Harv stretched a smile. “Mary, you’re sure one courageous woman. During the break you mentioned your mother sent you a death threat for your birthday.”
“Yes, Harvard! But knowing I had pursued truth took much of the sting out of her words.”
“You don’t take her threats seriously?”
Oops! Mary Faith had knocked over her glass. The camera closed in on her fixed smile. “Harvard, murder takes a certain strength of character that Theola Faith lacks. Coming out of the closet is the nicest thing I’ve done for myself in years, and I would like to make one thing perfectly clear. Behind every successful writer is a whale of a good agent and an inspired and inspiring editor. So, if I may, I wish to say thank you and God bless to Sadie Fishman and Monica Mary O’Bryan.”
Whipping the control out of Ben’s hand I blinked off the TV.
“Ellie!”
“I’m sorry,” I folded down on the bed. “Suddenly I remembered the baby might have its ear pressed to the belly button keyhole. And I don’t want him or her getting any ideas.”
“Darling, you won’t be a Monster Mommy,” avowed t
he man in the Laura Ashley toga, as he switched on a bedside lamp.
“Ben, I’ve no credentials for the job. No prior experience. Tell me, if you were the baby would you be happy?”
His face and torso were air-brushed with the rosy glow from the lamp. Lying down beside me he soothed a hand down my arm. “Tell me more about your mother.”
Turning away from him, I twisted my hair into a knot. “I have only wonderful memories of her. She was beautiful, clever, and breathtakingly thin. She was like a Christmas sparkler bursting into the air in a shower of silver light. My father adored her. When she died, he escaped into his midlife amusement park and has never jumped off the merry-go-round.”
“You’ve got me,” Ben murmured against my neck.
“Do you come with a free coupon for dinner?”
“I was wondering about room service,” he said, undoing the toga and drawing me inside.
’Twas the middle of the night and I awoke to sweating, heartpounding terror. Where was I? The room was a black box with threads of light breaking in through the cracks. As for the person in bed beside me, I reached out and felt blindly over his face until slowly the familiar feel of him warmed my hands and I was able to settle back against the pillows. My breathing slowed. This had happened before on trips away from home ever since Child Ellie paid that first fateful visit to Merlin’s Court. And this time the change in time zones didn’t help when it came to dozing off again. At home this would be mid-morning.
Hugging my pillow, I remembered I’d forgotten my evening prayers. “Please God, I don’t mind whether the baby is a boy or a girl, so long as it’s thin. And while we are having this little talk, please don’t ever get the idea that I want to be famous.”
I was sinking back down into the glorious welter of sleep when Ben tapped me on the shoulder with a finger that felt like a mallet. “Wakey! Wakey!”
The ensuing scene was from a speeded-up horror movie. I was thrust into a steaming shower, spun around, towel-dried, hurtled into my clothes. Still raking a comb through my hair, I ran out the door, raced down the stairs, skidded across the lobby and out onto the street where I was assaulted by brutal Boston sunlight.
What a ghastly mistake I’d made wearing the salmon pink silk shift. My face would clash with it in minutes. The sky was bleached almost white, and though we were walking fast, my shoes kept sticking to the pavement like hot irons on nylon undies.
“What’s the obscene rush?” I asked the mad dog of an Englishman who had brought us out in the 8:00 A.M. sun. His looking as though he’d just been lifted from the tissue paper of an Austin Reed box made me no less cross.
“Sweetheart, do we want to waste the day?” His eyes shifted away from mine. Naively, I thought he was making sure we didn’t get nailed by one of several cars, all trying to beat the amber light, as we dashed across the brick street, heavy on charm and hard on the feet. For one bulgy-eyed moment I feared I’d have to vault the bonnet of the last car between me and the pavement, or—as was my habit when faced with leaping the Wooden Horse at school—crawl underneath. All by way of explaining that I still didn’t twig that Ben was keeping something from me when he guided me toward the Golden Arches and into McDonalds.
On home soil he would only have entered such a place feet first. But surely the possibility had occurred to him that here in Boston Mangés’ spies might be anywhere! To be fair, he sounded edgy when ordering for us and sought out a table screened by plastic leaves entwined around the brass rail room divider. But he had almost finished his Egg McMuffin before he even broached the possibility of danger.
“Ellie, this is great! I may find myself fighting an irresistible urge to return.”
“Good heavens! I don’t know which I dread more—your having a fling with a fast woman or fast food!”
Ben insisted we go back for seconds. Big mistake. The red-headed man ahead of us was telling the sweet young thing who was trying to take his order about the book he was reading.
“First time in my life I didn’t just read the jacket notes.” Voice deep with pride.
“Say, you talking about Monster Mommy?” This came from the wisp of a woman behind us.
Without a do-you-mind, a burly man in a hard hat elbowed me sideways. “Anyone here hate the part about the Sunday outings to that place as much as I did? Dang me, if I wasn’t afraid to sleep with the light out and me born and bred in the Bronx. That poor Mary kid! A mother like that, who needs enemies? My dad always had the hots for the Sex Kitten and now Mom’s laughing fit to bust a zipper.”
I could feel varicose veins popping up in my legs as I stood there. And we English are always yabbering on about the pace of life in the States being too fast! Still, my discomfort wasn’t only physical. I was beginning to feel pursued by those words: Monster Mommy. I wanted to swat them away, pluck them out of my hair. Wouldn’t you know that when we got back to our table we found droppings on it—cigarette ash and a copy of People magazine, with the Monster Theola Faith’s face blazing up at me from the cover. A hasty thumb through, while Ben devoured his milkshake, brought me to a three-page spread: “Is Motherhood Becoming a Questionable Activity?” A profile shot of Mary Faith, all nose and headscarf, followed by a lengthy comment from the Monster Mum on her daughter’s sizzling bestseller. “Why wouldn’t darling Mary’s book be a smash! I’m sure she stuck to words she can spell—the four-letter ones.”
“What’s up, sweetheart? A ghost walk over your grave?” Ben asked.
“Two. The Tramwells.” How it all came back, the dire warnings about the Black Cloud, followed almost in the same breath by their mention of Theola Faith, a person linked to my mother’s one and only trip to America. The fates would certainly seem to be up to something fishy … Time to leave. Time to pull myself together. Happily, my unease soon melted, along with the ice cube I dropped inside the front of my dress before braving the scorching heat again.
Ben advocated that we leave the black sports car in the Mulberry Inn’s parking lot while we took buses or walked. If I hadn’t been afraid of breaking his pioneering spirit, I would have asked if we’d rented the vroom-vroom so we could go out and pet it once in a while. A woman’s patience is never done. Best turn my energy to embracing the opportunities for self-enrichment Boston offered.
My education in history had been hampered by teachers who classified anything after 1750 as current events. I would be newly educated knowing that Paul Revere charged travelling expenses incurred in stabling his horse to the Massachusetts Bay Colony when we British were coming. The great patriot’s first wife (so sayeth our bus driver guide) departed this vale of tears after bearing him numerous offspring. And Wife Number Two, we learned, did in the goodness of time shoulder her yoke in the cause. Previously, I had not pondered why Mr. Revere was out roaming about on his horse, come night time, in the vicinity of the Old North Church. Now all was made plain. Hubby had been booted from the bedchamber and the house.
Trailing after my husband, down endless pale green museum halls, peering into glass cabinets at sets of mangled spurs and rusted water flasks, I sensed that history may well have hinged on one woman—a good woman clutching the bedsheets to her beleaguered breast and snarling, “Husband, enough! Am I not prithee already stretchmarked from head to toe?”
Some things can only be understood by members of the oldest club in the world.
Back on the outdoor trail we peered over an iron fence—the sort that looks like a row of spears held in the hands of the unseen enemy—into a heroes’ graveyard. Rain fell in gentle teardrops as we continued to explore. We also serve who only stand and stare at doorway plaques. So-and-so dwelt, served, and plotted in these narrow houses with the white paintwork and scrub-worn steps. The so-and-so’s all being men. Their women being too busy raising little patriots to do anything meaningful. Thank God for this modern age, when being female doesn’t mean being kept in the dark.
Brushing aside cobwebs of rain, Ben aimed his Nikon at the Old North Church. “All this fresh
air has done you the world of good, sweetheart. Your cheeks glow like pomegranates.” The camera went back into his pocket and he took my hand. “Think my blue tie with the red and gold stripes would be suitable for my first Mangé Meeting?”
“Splendid,” I said. A pair of lovers passed us, entwined like a Rodin sculpture. Someone kicked an empty Coke bottle toward a litter bin, where it reeled drunkenly. “May one ask where you are to make contact?”
Ben squinted like a Siamese cat. Meaning he didn’t look at me. “Good question, Ellie. I think we should start making tracks immediately after lunch.”
“So soon!” How had I latched on to the idea we were to be blessed with two or three days to ourselves? Feeling rotten, I must have done some hearing without listening. Said reflections kept me from noticing that Ben had sidestepped my question, the way we were stepping around the banjo player seated cross-legged on the pavement. Whither my love went I would go, but I was no wiser where.
Taking hold of my hand he galloped us along. “Sweetheart, I don’t want to rush you.”
“What, and spoil a lovely, leisurely day?”
“Has it been … nice?” Maybe an insect got him in the eye; maybe he didn’t twitch, but I got the peculiar idea that he hoped Boston failed to meet my expectations. Of course. Yes, We Deliver does say pregnancy effects men in strange ways.
During lunch in a restaurant whose marble slab and stainless steel decor suggested a converted fish morgue, Ben confessed that he hadn’t been impressed with the harbour.
“What did you expect, boats shaped like teapots?”
And, later, when we were organizing our luggage in the boot of the black convertible, he claimed the proprietress of the Mulberry Inn had looked suspicious when he paid in cash.
“Well, darling, that was quite a wad you flashed her. I did wonder myself if you had nipped out to rob the corner bank while I was in the bathroom.”
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