The Angry Woman Suite

by Lee Fullbright

  “Give yourself a little credit. You saw it the same time I did. Look, Lear’s intense, and like you, he’s been known to drink too much—”

  “Aw, Matt—”

  “Shut up, old boy,” Matthew said nicely. “Then Frederick arrives on the scene and all of a sudden Lear’s sobered up. Notice that? That Lear hasn’t been much of a drinking buddy to you lately? Have you asked yourself why? The answer isn’t because the pressure of running Grayson Investments has eased up; Lear thrives on business. No, Lear’s excuse for escaping has always been Elizabeth—but she’s not on his back.”

  “Exactly!” I exulted. “She’s preoccupied.”

  Matthew mused, “I believe Frederick’s thinking he’s got things set in place.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Look at the other pieces of the puzzle.”

  “What puzzle? I don’t know what you mean … I just know we need to do something to save Lear!”

  Matthew scowled and stood up. “I’m here to tell you something, Aidan. You know what people care about when they get involved in things that are none of their business? They care about making themselves noticed.”

  I flinched, drawing back.

  “What you really care about, Aidan, is getting one over on Frederick and Elizabeth. Because you don’t like either of them. Fair enough—but tell it like it is. Just tell the truth. Can’t say as I blame you about Frederick, though. He’s an arrogant sonofabitch and we’d all do well to watch him.”

  Matthew put a hand on my shoulder. “I love Sahar,” he said quietly. “I love her for being the other side of me. Sometimes when people are married as long as Sahar and I’ve been, that’s what’s left: being the other side of someone. But there’s another thing I’m here to tell you, Aidan: Sahar’s not what she seems. None of us are what we seem. Something else: Sahar never had polio. Close your mouth, Aidan. You heard me right. You’re wondering why Sahar tells the polio story? To explain the wheelchair, of course. But the better answer is because stories suit Sahar.

  “Look, when Jamie was small, Sahar took a bad fall. Her spinal cord was damaged. There’s more. I’d been involved with someone else. Oh, it was stupid, it meant nothing, and it had finished. But she, the other woman, refused to accept it. She followed me. She stalked me. I went to her house to reason with her … I couldn’t have made a worse call. Sahar was there when I arrived. At the top of the stairs, on the landing, haranguing my mistress.”

  I drew in a breath. Matthew looked at a point past my shoulder.

  “She did it because she thought everything was about her. She did it because she couldn’t see a year down the road. She did it because she was thinking only of the immediate: how to punish me and how to get me back. But I was in her way, as she was in mine. She was pushed to the edge, Aidan.” Matthew’s eyes re-focused. “Aren’t we a joke? Aren’t we all jokes? Damn, but we’re jokes, Aidan. We say we want this or that, but then we put up roadblocks to keep ourselves from getting those very things we say we want.”

  The “she’s” and “her’s” had mixed me up. I wasn’t sure which woman Matthew meant when he’d said they’d been in the other’s way. The mistress or Sahar? And “she” did what? was Matthew implying that the mistress had pushed Sahar down the flight of stairs? Or did he mean Sahar had engineered her own fall? And that the mistress had obstructed Matthew’s attempt to “catch” Sahar as she hurtled down the stairs?

  “I’m not sure I—”

  “Understand? Of course you don’t. Relationships aren’t your expertise, Aidan. But you do show promise. Listen. In the end she destroyed herself—but God help me, I was the one who set her up to do it. Think about that, Aidan.”

  “But … why? If you loved Sahar so much, why did you need this other woman?”

  Matthew snorted. “You’re the ultimate contradiction in terms, Aidan: a romantic academic. The answer is I didn’t need the other woman. I wanted her for the reasons men always want women. To feel good about myself, consequences be damned. But in this case, not long after starting the affair, I went back to feeling dead.”

  Matthew’s voice went worn. “And then one day I woke up wanting to be different. I wanted to be better. A better person. I wanted to revamp the life I’d chosen first, the one with Sahar. I wanted Sahar whole … I wanted to feel whole once more.”

  I watched Matthew work his Adam’s apple, fascinated, horrified, praying he wouldn’t break down. I wouldn’t know what to do if Matthew Waterston broke down.

  “We can’t always get what we want, Aidan. But Sahar forgave me, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “She forgave me, and in so doing condemned me to eternal hell.”

  His sudden ferocity was shocking.

  “Hell! You understand what that means, Aidan? Of course you do! It means getting up every day and looking straight on at what you’ve done, knowing you can never take it back. It’s knowing I can never again say what I feel. If I do I’ll hurt Sahar more, and she’ll forgive me more! What does it take to make that woman show anger? To make her real? That look in Sahar’s eyes, you’ve seen it? Of course you’ve seen it! We’ve all seen it! Look closer. It’s not kindness, it’s not love, it’s not even interest! It’s the fires of hell! Sahar’s consumed with consuming me with her goddamn forgiveness and her goddamn understanding and her fucking neediness! And if you think for one minute that our insanity hasn’t touched Jamie and that he doesn’t understand his mother, you’ve got another think coming!”

  Matthew steadied his breathing. “What I’m talking about, Aidan, is cause and effect. I’m talking consequences here. The consequences to Lear and his family, and by extension to you or me as well if you were to tell Lear about his wife and Frederick.

  “I’m still not sure exactly where this is going, what Frederick’s up to, but I swear he’s up to something more than screwing Elizabeth—so, see, I don’t know everything first. But the one thing I do know is that unless you’re prepared to handle the consequences, leave Lear’s family be. Getting one over on Frederick Forsythe and Elizabeth Grayson is not simple. Nothing is simple.

  “You should also know,” Matthew went on, voice regular again, “that there’s more to Lear than what’s readily apparent—but then again nothing’s real until you’ve seen it with your own eyes. I understand that. You know, it might well be the only way you’re ever going to learn anything, my friend: seeing it with your own eyes. It’s how it works for most of us. But in the meantime, try staying out of your own way, old boy. And here’s another piece of unsolicited advice: don’t let Lear push you to the edge.”

  It was nearing spring of 1917 when I scribbled this note in my diary: “April 6th, Washington’s Headquarters. I’ve just gotten the news. America has declared war on Germany. Everyone is frenzied. Forget Festival. This is an unbelievable day.”

  Sahar told me that 250 soldiers were to be encamped at the base of Grayson Hill for field training prior to going overseas. It was a Saturday morning and she’d offered to man the museum while Jamie and I took the train to Philadelphia to see the James Reese Europe Orchestra perform. I adjusted my spectacles, almost spilling the coffee I was pouring for Jamie.

  “Lear’s going over, too. He told Matthew yesterday.”

  I spilled the coffee. “Overseas? To war? No! He’s too damn old!”

  “He’ll be going with the ambulance corps. With Festival on hold, he’s thinking of writing about experiences on the front.”

  “Like a war correspondent? Why, that’s the nuttiest—”

  “He’s thinking of writing a book. You know how Lear’s always wanted to write.”

  “I know no such thing,” I said grumpily. “And I’m surprised you know so much.”

  “You’re always surprised I know so much. Thank God Jamie’s only fifteen. And Matthew is too old. Plus, we’ll still have you, Aidan.”

  I was not blind, but I was disadvantaged. My vision, though long stable, had been affected by my old childhood injury, to the p
oint I wasn’t able, needed or wanted for war.

  “Frederick Forsythe’s been called up,” Sahar said briskly. “He’s leaving right after the wedding.”

  “What wedding?” I didn’t listen for the answer. I was thinking of Lear’s obsession with the war; how it wasn’t fair that I, the man who’d so carefully and almost single-handedly preserved the story of the Battle of Brandywine, nearly living on top of its battlefield, honoring relics and warriors with my museum and lectures, could be deemed unfit to participate in a current war, while the likes of the fastidious Lear, who knew war only from newspapers, and the pain-in-the-ass Frederick, were welcomed with opened arms. Never mind that I hadn’t believed in America’s involvement in the war in the first place: that wasn’t the point. Illegitimacy was the point.

  “Magdalene Grayson and Frederick Forsythe’s wedding. Aidan, are you listening to me? The wedding’s in three weeks. I told Lear I’d love to host a reception at the mill house.”

  “I’d no idea Frederick and Magdalene were even seeing each other.” I glanced at Jamie, then gave Sahar a certain look, sending the message, But what about Frederick and Elizabeth?

  But what I said aloud was, “And Frederick’s been called up, you say?”

  “Lothian’s going to be bridesmaid,” Jamie volunteered.

  “And what about Magdalene’s other sister?” I asked irritably. “Stella the monster? What about Stella? Isn’t it customary for all the bride’s sisters to attend the bride?”

  “But no one’s ever actually seen Stella,” Sahar protested. “You know that.”

  “Whether Stella’s at the wedding or not,” Jamie said airily, “is up to Magdalene. The bride gets to choose.” Jamie’s lips turned up at the corners, in a sly grin. “Lothian says Stella’s an ogre, she’s so deformed.”

  “Lothian’s imaginative,” Sahar reproved. And then, “Is there really a Stella?”

  Jamie didn’t answer directly. “It’s true, Mother, Lothian is the most imaginative person I know—besides you. But just think: if Magdalene says Stella’s in, then everyone will finally get their chance to ogle Stella.”

  For the first time in a long while I thought of Magdalene, recalling what a strange child she’d been. A picture swam into my consciousness, but it wasn’t of the fair-haired, big-boned outsider who’d disdained me and the status quo. It was of umber-colored fields and ice-blue streams wending past picturesque farms—but beyond that pretty distance storm clouds hovered. I’d shared that picture with Magdalene on the crest of the knoll where I’d found her crying, and whereas I’d looked out on that landscape and seen magnificence, Magdalene had looked beyond and seen adversary in those dark clouds overhead. She’d seen the war making its way for us. She’d said, “I am overwhelmed … I wanted to be moved.”

  She was evil. She delighted in spectacle, probably even manufacturing crises when life got predictable, just so she could watch them play out; that’s the kind of evil girl she was. I never saw her actually do it, but I easily imagined her instigating fights in my schoolyard, walking away satisfied as they picked up steam. Most likely she’d pulled wings off butterflies, too, just to watch them wobble into their death throes.

  Naturally, then, I wasn’t naive enough to believe that time had mellowed Magdalene Grayson. As a spy without peer, she must’ve discovered her mother’s affair with Frederick Forsythe. In fact, Magdalene, I told myself, had to be marrying Frederick Forsythe for the sheer spectacle of spiting her mother. That would be just like her.

  I smiled at Sahar and urged Jamie to run back across the road to collect another sweater for our journey to Philadelphia.

  “Imagine,” I said to Sahar, watching Jamie disappear into the mill house. “Elizabeth’s worked so diligently at keeping her shame locked up. But damn, without Stella as a member of this wedding party, Magdalene wouldn’t have even half a spectacle, and I’ll bet—”

  I felt it, I could almost see it. The sudden premonition left me breathless.

  Fey. The word I’d used to describe Magdalene as a child. It meant an unusually excited state, once believed to portend sudden death, as in doomed. I believed, then, it had suited Magdalene Grayson to a T. And yet, looking back, so many years after the horrible murders and what happened to Stella because of them, I finally know it as the word that had suited nearly every one of us.

  Everyone but Magdalene Grayson.

  From the loft where I directed a quartet that included Jamie, I assumed Stella Grayson was a member of the wedding party. There were two bridesmaids; one tiny—Lothian, of course—and the other unbelievably tall and bony. Problem was, I wouldn’t have been able to make out facial features regardless of the distance between us. The bridesmaids’ faces, as well as the bride’s, were sheathed in dense netting. How could they even see where they were walking? Jamie’s lips quivered with suppressed laughter.

  “You knew about the veils,” I accused him back at the mill house, dodging servants arranging food and flowers. “And you know Stella.”

  Jamie’s smile was enigmatic. “Of course I know Stella. I grew up with Magdalene and Lothian. They’re my friends. You’d think I’d know a few things about them, including their sister. It amazes me, Aidan, that you never figured that out.” He leaned forward, pseudo-leering. “I’ve been inside the chamber of horrors, Aidan, and it is a dark, creepy-crawly—”

  “Oh shut up. It’s just that people have been talking about Stella for years, what she looks like, where her parents keep her, and here you’ve known all along, yet never said a word. Not even to your father, I’d wager. Am I right?”

  “Can’t take that wager, Aidan.” Jamie’s grin widened. “But have to admit, I am very good with secrets.”

  “No kidding. Where’s Stella now?” I craned my neck. “For that matter, where’s the bride? How did the bride get in here without me seeing her? And where’s the groom? Isn’t the groom supposed to be with the bride? Where is everybody?” Sahar wheeled up next to us.

  “You can be heard all the way into the next room, Aidan. The bride’s in my dressing room. But Stella went back to Grayson House with her mother right after the wedding; Elizabeth pleaded a migraine—and stop scowling. No one else got the chance to see Stella, either. Now go. You’ll find the groom with the other men under the oak. They have gin.”

  “What men?” I said, morose. “There’re just a few of us left.”

  Sahar smiled. “Oh stop—Jamie dear, I need your help. And, Aidan, would you mind bringing in a couple more bottles of gin?—through the kitchen door, and just the other side of it.”

  I went into the kitchen and pressed a knothole in the wood siding, exposing the hidden door that also opened onto the side courtyard, just for fun, enjoying the wide-eyed looks of the staff. I stepped into the courtyard. The air was heavy with humidity, and from where I stood, taking in deep gulps, I could’ve been in a wilderness, except for the party supplies stacked a table high. I stepped forward and it was then I heard them: male voices, low-pitched. I moved slowly, trying to pinpoint their location, until I was all the way at the back of the house, overlooking the old water mill one level below.

  They jumped apart, out of their embrace, and my first thought, ridiculous as it was, is that a bridegroom should stay with all the men—that is, if he can’t stay with his bride. And my second thought was that he certainly was not to be clutched in someone else’s arms, and moreover this other person’s arms were not to be another male’s. The next thought was that I should do or say something, but I was frozen in place. So the three of us stood there separated by a landing and a pond of brackish-looking water, faces like bleached bones, mute as doorknobs. Frederick was the first to speak:

  “Introductions won’t be necessary.”

  His companion, whom I’d never seen before, broke into a run, disappearing around the side of the house—and I debated: if I ran like the wind whipping about us, taking the stairs two at a time, I could vault the ugly water separating Frederick from me, and before Frederick could kn
ow what hit him, I’d be pummeling him with my bare hands, beating the sorry life right out of him. But I was saved from making an ass of myself by Jamie, obviously sent to round up stragglers. I wondered how much he’d seen.

  “Everyone’s here!” Even with the distance and my less than perfect eyesight, I saw Jamie’s frown. “Hurry it up! It’s starting to rain and we’re ready to cut the cake!”

  While my head pounded and my insides seethed, Frederick made his rounds of wedding guests, shaking hands, kissing cheeks, exchanging guffaws and back slaps. I wished him dead, and I wished to be the one to brandish the sword, to draw the blood, to scissor the entrails. He deserved to die, and it wasn’t just because he’d used Elizabeth Grayson to worm himself in with Lear, probably so he could get his hands on Magdalene Grayson’s share of the family booty. Nor was it because Magdalene was in for the surprise of her life, finding out about her husband’s preference for men—I didn’t give a tinker’s damn about Magdalene. No, for me, this had always been about what Frederick intended to do next—and I knew what that was. He intended to demolish the last vestiges of our pretty pictures, everything our colony represented: civilization, art, history, music—starting with Lear. Then he’d start on Matthew. Then me. And then he’d be king of my mountain, and the valley. Frederick would own the Brandywine.

  I joined the other guests, moving in close to Jamie and Matthew beside the cake table, in time to see Frederick offer his arm to a tall, willowy woman. He escorted her across the great room, both like shadowy, nether-world creatures to my short-sighted eyes. But then, when they were almost on us, Magdalene turned her head. Our eyes locked, as did the breath in my chest.

  “I’ll close my mouth,” Jamie whispered in my ear, “if you close yours.”

  Her beauty was more spectacular than even Lothian’s. Whereas Lothian’s face was soft and oval-shaped, Magdalene’s had become chiseled angularity, fine and even—yet she wasn’t just beautiful. She had mystique, something rarely seen; it was something in her eyes. Tendrils of pale hair escaped the white snood she wore, making a halo around her damp forehead and flushed cheeks, and I sensed rather than heard Matthew’s own soft exclamation when she laughingly brushed Frederick’s cheek with her lips; lips that were wide and red and ripe, parted slightly, teasing, yet weirdly circumspect. My heart somersaulted when Frederick fed her cake, when the tip of her tongue, pink and long and tipped with ivory frosting, snaked onto those red lips, licking them clean and shiny.