Ancient hurts neatly closeted, parallel lives documented, my previous connection with Jamie was, I believed, reestablished.
But it turned out to be nine long years before the fog lifted completely. Nine years of a mostly flat life. Nine years before the biggest peak on my comfortable horizon was that of Jamie’s agent booking an engagement for him at The Eagle Club in New York, a prestigious slot for even a seasoned pro.
Nine years since I’d last set foot in Manhattan, the city where Matthew and Magdalene held court. A city I no longer had reason to avoid because Matthew and Magdalene were the one history lesson I cared nothing about.
In fact, I couldn’t have been less interested or invested in them. I was safe.
I wheeled Sahar into The Eagle Club, wishing she could walk on her own, not for my sake, but so the world would have to look up at her quiet beauty, not down. Sahar, though, didn’t seem to mind. She seemed entranced by the candlelight and glamor; the beautiful women with red lips and long cigarette holders, the handsome tuxedoed men, and large round tables dressed in linens and crystal and silver. I settled her in at a banquette, while Lothian, sliding in between Sahar and Lear, had eyes only for the stage and the last musician to appear: Jamie. The ballroom quieted when he bowed and took a seat at the piano, and at his nod the orchestra began “Any Ice Today Lady?”
I could hear Lothian’s deep sigh. Everyone heard it. Twenty-four then, in 1928, and at her loveliest, Lothian had recently bobbed and marcelled her blond hair, a style all the rage of the jazz age, and while it was a fashion I didn’t take a particular fancy to, preferring the upswept style of an earlier day, it highlighted Lothian’s small, pretty features perfectly, and the diamonds at her ears and throat. She reached into her evening bag and extracted a cigarette and long holder, another thing I was still unaccustomed to: women smoking in public. Her father lit her cigarette.
“He’s done it,” she said to no one in particular, exhaling. “Jamie’s really done it—and the thing is, he’s being broadcast all over the state—no, make that four states. Right now, right this very minute!”
It was something, and I couldn’t help reminiscing about the lonely boy who’d begged me to teach him the violin, the piano, and after that the trumpet. I thought of the trip we’d taken to Philadelphia to see the Castles dance, and of his dreams of becoming an orchestra leader one day.
At the opening bars of “Dazed,” Jamie left the bridge to the orchestra, and crossed the whole of the ballroom with long, purposeful strides, the crowd on the dance floor parting for him. He knew exactly where he was going, knew exactly the impression he was making: cool, handsome and poetic. He leaned over us and grinned, and said just this one thing before striding back to his place on stage: “RCA Victor has offered me a contract. They want me to record ‘Dazed.’”
And that did it for me as well. I tapped my pipe into the ashtray, cleared my throat and excused myself.
With “Dazed” hovering in the background, premonition glanced over me. I watched my step, so disorienting was the disparity of light between the ballroom and the lobby. And that’s when I saw her. She stood alone in the lobby, swathed in white fur, watching me. I’d neither memory nor forethought, only awareness of the hand she held out to me.
“Well, well, well,” my own voice spoke for me. I ignored her hand. “Look what the cat dragged in.” It was not what I would’ve wanted to say had I planned it, which of course I had, a thousand times. “How long has it been, Magdalene? Five, ten, fifteen?” I knew to the day how long it’d been. Nine years. As if I cared.
She turned and walked away. I quickly followed, taking her elbow and steering her over to an alcove. We were alone. She scowled.
“I didn’t know you’d hate me,” were her first words to me in nine years.
I stared. Gone was the last vestige of small town girl, as well as any semblance of softness, the side of her that had made her opposite, her remoteness, so tantalizing. The woman standing before me was varnished, every hair in place, wholly composed, totally sophisticated. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to shake her. I wanted to muss that hair. I’d missed her.
“With a passion,” I replied.
“I’d have thought you’d realized—”
“Think again.”
Her eyes widened. “Aidan, have you been … well?”
To be in her presence was to risk being ambushed, ensnared, beat to a bloody pulp and left for dead—that’s how much she cared. Well, I’d have none of it. I would not be seduced.
“Did you think,” I said from between clenched teeth, “that I’d think you swell for going behind the back of the woman who took you in, who cared for your son while you—?” I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t give life to what she’d done with Matthew. Sahar never did and I wouldn’t either. Magdalene’s pale eyes darkened.
“Oh, for God’s sake, you’re not still on that train, are you?” She lifted her chin. “How’s my father?” Which was about the last thing I’d expected her to say.
“Answer the question,” I snapped.
“I’m here to see my father.”
“First, where is he?”
She had the temerity to look down, to stroke the ridiculous fur she wore. “I presume, by he, you mean Matthew Waterston.”
“You reek of cigar smoke.” It was about as stupid a statement as I’d ever made. “Where is he?”
Red blotches stained both cheeks, and I should’ve known. Caught, cornered, it made no difference; Magdalene, ever contentious, forever opposed to something, came right back.
“You can go to hell, Aidan Madsen. And I don’t smoke.”
I couldn’t control the grin that tugged at my lips—and it was because she was electric, pure life, mysterious and satisfying, like that first bolt of gin to the system. And despite the righteous indignation I’d so valiantly tried holding onto, I suddenly had to know where she was coming from, where she was going, so I could go, too, so I could keep feeling. I’d forgotten about feeling. I hadn’t even realized real feeling had been missing from my life.
“So you want to talk to your father? And this was the only way you knew to get his attention, lurking in ballroom lobbies? You don’t believe in telephones?”
She halfway smiled. “Don’t be mean. And if you must know, it’s Mother. I don’t want to talk with her. Not just yet. So when I got the invitation to Jamie’s opening—”
“You got an invitation?”
Her slight smile vanished like spit in air and she tore into me like nobody’s business, informing me that Jamie, unlike me, did not think she was a pariah. In fact, Jamie was rational and practical and generous, not to mention sensitive. They didn’t come much more astute or sensitive than Jamie. And she was his father’s friend so far as Jamie was concerned, easy as that … and for my information I was a perfect idiot to believe she had not appreciated Sahar—but life was not simple, just as Sahar was not simple, and neither was I simple for that matter. What I was, was an ass, and I’d always been an ass, and I exasperated her. Everybody exasperated her. Every small, underused mind outside New York City exasperated her. Furthermore, she was not with Matthew, not in that sense of “with,” as if that were any of my business, which it most certainly was not.
“And now I want to talk with my father. I saw him come in with you. Would you bring him to me, please?”
Oh, she was good, very good. In fact, they didn’t come much better. But I thought I saw a trace of the old vulnerability in the tightness of Magdalene’s mouth, the shadows under her eyes. And that’s when I knew she was hiding something.
Which only served to make me feel even more alive.
I smiled in my best derisive manner and left her then, employing a suitable I-could-give-a-shit swagger, and I fetched Lear, and what he and Magdalene discussed in that lobby I didn’t know, stuck as I was back at the table with Sahar and Lothian making like nothing had happened. As if I didn’t know Matthew was somewhere in that ballroom smoking a stogie, watching, probably eve
n taking bets on the cat and mouse he’d no doubt set up.
As if I didn’t know something rare was coming down the pike.
I looked at Jamie on that stage and suppressed another smile, quelling the happy jiggle of my leg under the table. As if I didn’t know Jamie was also playing both sides of the fiddle, and just as well, just as thoroughly, as he’d learned to play most everything else.
As if I didn’t know Jamie, my perfect boy, was like his father, my fallen hero.
Magdalene was the first to move back to Chadds Ford.
“It’s not fair, Mr. Madsen!” Lothian cried. “It’s the end of everything!”
I’d just returned from a week’s stay in Philadelphia, where I’d been presented a Man of the Year Award by the Delaware Valley Industrial Editors, and juggling coat, suitcase and keys, I’d yet to even get my front door open. Lothian threw her bicycle to the ground. Her bobbed hair rippled with cowlicks, and her normally fair skin was mottled. She looked, uncharacteristically, a fright.
“It’s not fair!” she yelled again.
I unlocked the door and set my belongings just inside. Although Lothian had generally exhibited a fairly even temperament as a youngster, I’d seen these same flashes of drama in my classroom. I wasn’t unduly concerned.
Lothian wiped her eyes and swept inside Washington’s Headquarters, plopping herself down on a chair at the table, where she folded herself over at the waist, forehead colliding with knees.
“What is it?” I asked with practiced patience. “What isn’t fair?” My head ached, and I hoped she’d be quick about it, so I could be equally quick dispensing words of wisdom and getting her out the door and myself in a hot bath, gin in hand. Lothian looked up, eyes wild.
“Magdalene!” she wailed. The blood pounded sudden and hard in my ears. I dropped into a chair and steeled myself for the worst: an accident, an illness, another marriage.
“Okay.”
“She’s moved back!”
“What?”
“Yes! And as if having crazy Stella in my family isn’t enough to bear, now Magdalene’s back in Chadds Ford and ruining everything!”
“For a visit, you mean?”
“No, she’s come to stay, Mr. Madsen! And it’s the end of everything! It is! I know it is! My life is never going to be the same!”
I kept my expression neutral. “From the top. And no hysteria, please. No one’s died.”
Lothian replied that she might just as well have died, because Magdalene had arrived the week before, with trunks and dozens of suitcases, not to mention that boy Earl, who was as sullen as they come, and she’d taken over, throwing her stuff around and putting on airs and locking herself up with their father in his office, as if they shared something only the two of them could know. And did I realize how that made the rest of them feel? Did I just realize? Like outsiders, that’s how! And in their own house. But of course Magdalene had never thought of anyone but herself. She’d never considered the ramifications of her actions. Magdalene had always been self-centered.
I looked at my hands folded on the table in front of me.
“And Mama’s in a horrible mood,” Lothian sniffled, fishing in her pocket, “because of the way Magdalene’s got everybody upset. And Stella’s acting crazier than ever.” Lothian looked over the handkerchief she’d produced. “Stella does that sometimes: acts crazy. She’s been fawning over that stupid Earl like there’s no tomorrow. Won’t let anybody else come near him. But she’s crazy, I tell you! Crazy about kids. I’ve never seen Stella so crazy!”
I did a quick calculation. Earl was now ten years old. I tried picturing Stella mooning over Earl, tried imagining what the boy must think of the grotesque woman he surely couldn’t remember. I wondered if Stella scared Earl, and if she didn’t scare him, then surely Elizabeth, his grandmother, did, which made better sense anyhow.
And what was this secret of Magdalene’s?
Lothian let out a fresh wail. “And after what Magdalene’s done! To think my father’s going to let her get away with it!”
“What’s Magdalene done?”
Lothian looked down. “You know.”
“No, I’m afraid—”
“Magdalene,” Lothian’s voice dropped another octave, “is going …” She swallowed. “She’s going to have another baby, Mr. Madsen!”
I jerked back.
Lothian leaped to her feet. “Oh, I’m so humiliated, I could just cry!”
I wasn’t myself when I pointed out she was already crying, and would she mind very much shutting the hell up so I could think straight? But my fuzzy brain perceived this: Lothian didn’t like the tone of my voice. Not at all. She leaned over the table and sized me up as if a switch had been thrown, revealing yet another enemy.
“You don’t get it,” she spat, declaring war. “You don’t get it because you’ve always favored Magdalene, Mr. Madsen!”
“Blatantly untrue!”
“It is not—but can’t you understand what your precious Magdalene’s done now? To me? To all of us? And here you always thought she could do no wrong!”
“Zip it!” I snapped, schoolmaster comportment long gone. But she didn’t.
“My mother told me it’s your friend’s baby!” Lothian yelled.
I pushed myself back from the table. Lothian folded her arms over her chest and faced me down.
“It’s Matthew Waterston’s. Mother told me—”
“I thought you said your father’s the only one who knows Magdalene’s secrets—” I hated her suddenly.
“Yes, but Mother has her way with secrets, too, and the truth is Magdalene’s not even considering finding someone to marry—oh no, she couldn’t possibly do the circumspect thing, or even stay in the city and have her baby there and adopt it out. Women do that all the time, I’m sure they do! No, she had to follow Matthew Waterston back here to Chadds Ford, to have her bastard and ruin my life!” Lothian tossed her head.
“I’m sure Jamie won’t marry me now! Because, imagine, my sister’s going to have his father’s baby! And my mother’s told me that Jamie’s mother threatened to disown Jamie if he so much as even looks at a Grayson girl again! Who else could that mean but me? We’re ruined, I tell you! No Grayson can ever go to town again, or—”
“Wait. Matthew Waterston’s not due—”
Lothian’s laughter verged on hysteria. “You really don’t get it, do you, Mr. Madsen? Matthew Waterston’s already back in Chadds Ford! He arrived yesterday. And it’s none of this visiting crap. He’s at the mill house with his wife. Mother told me they’re together, as in together. A farce of course, but do you get it now, Mr. Madsen? This is not some sort of joke, you know! This is my life and I tell you, my mother’s right! Magdalene’s ruining it!”
I ran and ran and ran. Oh, but Lothian had gloated, because my horror had been so ill-disguised. A horror plastered against me, inside me and everywhere around me. Lothian’s doll-like features had contorted with sick pleasure seeing that horror, and that’s when the blinders had come off and I’d seen that it was the other Grayson women, not Stella, who were ugly beyond belief.
The Brandywine stopped me dead in my tracks that day. I saw how stuck I was, how convoluted my thinking was, how dependent my dreams had always been on Magdalene, always Magdalene—and that I’d been a perfect idiot, allowing myself to get sucked in again, even for five minutes.
I stared into the gray water. I could wade to the other bank, but I might not make it: the creek ran sharp. Besides, what was the point? I could run up to the next ford and cross the river there, and circle back down to Chadds Ford as the better-prepared British had done, surprising Washington, but that was miles, and I didn’t have a point or battles left to fight. I was superfluous—and I suddenly knew it like I’d never known anything before. So to do something so stupid as to run miles around a creek would reveal nothing more than the fact that I was able to go a distance. And who cared about that? Who really cared?
I couldn’t remember when I’
d been so disgusted with myself.
“Aidan!”
I turned, astounded to see Lear standing just upstream, lighting a cigarette. He’d parked on the shoulder of the road. I ran toward the car, stumbling, falling to my knees. Sahar opened her door, and next thing I knew my head was on her lap and she was stroking my hair.
“They move on,” she said. “It’s the natural order. This time he’s moving farther, that’s all.”
Mystified, I raised my head. Sahar was gazing out the windshield. I shivered and she looked down and smiled.
“We always knew Jamie wanted to take his orchestra on a bigger road, Aidan. And that has to mean California. He’s going to be a major star. Two years is a long time, true, but he’ll be back.”
I didn’t understand. “What’s this about Jamie?” I managed.
“He’s moving to California—you didn’t know? It’s a brilliant career move, California. And I know you’ll be supportive … he’ll be here tomorrow, stopping at Chadds Ford … listen, Aidan, I’d prefer Lothian not know about Jamie being here tomorrow, or about California.”
Her voice went tender. “I happened to see her leave Washington’s Headquarters, and judging from the way she was throwing that bike of hers around I figured she’d told you about Magdalene. Then I saw you run out. I called Lear. There was only one place you’d go.”
I sat back on my haunches, shivering. “You know?”
“About the pregnancy, yes. Lear told me.”
Sahar’s out-of-place smile stabbed another shiver down my spine.
“Stupid,” she sighed. “But I have managed to wring some good out of this. Matthew needed to come home and I agreed—but only if he’d take responsibility for Magdalene’s baby and free Jamie to stay with his career. Elizabeth and Lear understand how important Jamie’s career is, and although it’s going to cost some …” She looked at me curiously. My shivers had spread-eagled. I suddenly understood everything that freeing Jamie actually meant. I felt pale, even ghostly. I’d never known a person could feel ghostly.
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