I said, “Magdalene’s baby is … Jamie’s? Does he know?”
“How clever you are … now, no one’s to know about Jamie.” And then less cryptically, “Matthew’s here for good, Aidan. He’s ill, very ill. He’s been sick for some time.”
I just looked at her, silent and shivery.
“It’s circulatory, I think. He can’t stand for even two minutes. And he shakes all the time. His hands, legs, arms, everything.” She leaned in closer. “Matthew’s dying, Aidan. Jamie doesn’t know about his father dying … I’m letting him go without telling him. You understand.”
Dying? Matthew couldn’t die. Matthew was indestructible. There was that inappropriate smile of hers again. And then Sahar said, “I get the last word.”
And my shivering became full-blown shaking, as if I’d been drop-kicked into a blizzard. I somehow got to my feet and brushed my trousers off, calmly enough for a shaking man. I wouldn’t look at her, never again. But I did look across the roof of the car. Lear nodded and flicked his dead cigarette into the gray water of the Brandywine.
I understood the signal. It meant all was a go.
Sahar called out, “He’s finished, Aidan! Matthew’s done! He’s got to pay the price and I’m going to help him do it. I’m going to help him like he’s always helped me. But I need you and Lear. Can I count on you, Aidan, to help me take care of Matthew? Are you onboard?”
This was not the woman who’d always allowed me to feel noble. This was someone scaring the shit out of me. This was someone who meant Matthew harm; someone mean. Someone repellant.
I locked eyes with Lear and shook my head, signaling I needed to talk before we moved ahead. But later. Right that minute I needed to be left alone. Things had to wait until I was ready. Until life and the people in it began making sense again. I turned and continued running.
***
I’d been so sure Lear had interpreted my head shake—but my world continued breaking apart. I guess that’s the way life works when you hit a downhill slide, running.
It was dusk by the time I limped home, only to find another Grayson waiting for me: Magdalene.
I hesitate here … because I’ve no better way of putting this, Francis, although I can provide more back story later, when you’re older, if you want … but for right now, here are the facts:
After I let Magdalene inside Washington’s Headquarters, and after she told me the baby she was expecting was you and confirmed that Jamie is your father and not Matthew, I made love to Magdalene, betraying everything I’d ever stood for.
After, she slept. But I lay awake feeling like more hell—yet apparently I nodded off for a few minutes. And had a dream filled with shadowy figures that raced through my mind, then out of it, gliding up my bedroom walls, colliding together on the ceiling, becoming one, where it hovered, then breathed, its orange-yellow form spiking with each guilt-laden breath I took. I heard agonized screams, heard my name called, heard popping noises. The orange ball on my ceiling diffused into light-filled fingers.
I struggled out of the dream’s terribleness, bolting upright in my bed and realized, Fire!
I leaped to the window, and there across the road was the most hideous thing I’d ever seen: a wall of fire. I heard someone wail and thought it was Magdalene, then realized it was my own cry of horror. I forgot about Magdalene—didn’t even look at her—grabbed a blanket and ran for the staircase instead, down the stairs, slippers flapping against my heels, tripping and falling against my front door, flinging it open and running across the road to stand helplessly before the fire in the process of enveloping the mill house.
I saw how it could’ve happened. I saw the hot ash from Matthew’s cigar simmering on the Persian carpet in the great room. I saw the first red spark, the quick breath of flame. I saw the fire jump and feed on curtains and upholstery and furniture. I saw it savage the wall where the front door had been, making an opening wide enough to drive a truck through. I saw the fire punched back by a heavy gust of night air, and saw it turn and rush the hallway, falling in rank and file, fingers of flame at attention, waiting.
They had to have smelled it.
I saw Matthew struggle to rise. Saw him fight to lift Sahar from the bed and into her wheelchair. He gasped for breath and his limbs jumped—just as Sahar had described. I heard him damn tonight of all nights, the servants’ night off. And then he fought to push Sahar’s wheelchair into the hallway—no one ever fought so damn hard. Only to see those stubby fingers of flame. Still, there was just that one way out. Down that finger-lined hallway, through the great room.
He positioned himself in front of the wheelchair. He meant to pull it, to shield Sahar with his own body. But that was when the fingers of fire scurried forward. Sahar screamed and her eyes widened as flame licked the hem of her gown—and then I saw the skin of Matthew’s feet and ankles blister, shrink and darken. I saw the agony of terrible comprehension on his face.
Oh, but it’s a horrible way to die, getting burned alive and having to watch it happen to yourself from the toes up.
Almost as horrible as knowing I was way too late. And all because I’d been with Magdalene, betraying Jamie.
The guilt piercing something inside me was shrapnel-sharp and whatever that something was, it began withering, killing me along with Matthew and Sahar.
Matthew’s clothing ignited, and Sahar squealed and twisted in her wheelchair—and then, stunned, I saw our one-time invalid jump out of that chair and run for her life—Matthew gave a mighty bellow. “Sahar!” He rammed the great room, pushing Sahar’s wheelchair through the holocaust and out the incinerated front of the mill house. Hair ablaze, he staggered before disappearing in flame, uttering the cry meant to haunt me the rest of my days:
“Aiiiidan!”
I was shrieking, completely out of my mind of course, running in circles, trying to find a break in the noose of the nightmare I was caught in, but I could no more undo it than I could undo what Lear and I had already started.
A curtain of fire parted. Sahar’s wheelchair reappeared, wheels spinning, metal gleaming in firelight, under the old oak tree. Another movement caught my eye: a shadow in the grove, darting behind a tree. The shadow soared, then shortened, then swelled again. I made a dash for it, but it flickered, then disappeared—a trick of that firelight perhaps, because all I saw was Sahar sprawled face down on the ground, and Matthew sprawled behind her, both chillingly silent. The screams of agony, of terror, were done. Now there was really nothing.
“Aiiiidan!”
Nothing but the screaming of my soul and the hissing of the scene I turned to flee—but then the shadow that had been in the grove loomed at my side. It gripped my shoulder and spun me around, making me face it, completing the splintering of my world.
“I saw her too!” Lear yelled. “I saw Stella! Same as you! Oh my god, Aidan, but look at what Stella’s done now!”
And that, dear Francis, was it.
It being when Stella Grayson was decided as the perpetrator of the fire that killed the Waterstons.
It being when an innocent woman became an angry one, and I let it happen.
***
“Well, she did it again,” Jamie said, shoulders back, hands in his pockets, eyes still on the smoking rubble.
“Stella, you mean?”
“No. Mother. Jesus, when was the last time you changed clothes, Aidan? You look like crap.”
I’d heard of people who suppress grief when loved ones die, getting bossy instead, putting their sorrow to work directing aftermaths of situations gone horribly out of their control—Jamie was apparently one of those.
“This fire,” Jamie stressed, “was purposely set—we’ve been told as much. You remember what I told you about my mother choreographing her own falling accident?”
Only one thing could make me feel remotely better. I had to tell Jamie about the paintings. I had to tell him what I’d done—and then what we had to do.
“This fire was along that same line,
” Jamie said succinctly.
And then these words were out of my mouth before I could stop them: “You can’t be serious. Why would your mother start a fire she herself would die in?”
“Why,” Jamie countered, “would she throw herself down a flight of stairs?”
I broke eye contact, murmuring, “What do you think about Lear saying he saw Stella set the fire?”
“Lear saw bullshit. Stella wouldn’t hurt a fly—look, Aidan, this fire was set to get attention. Someone was supposed to smell the smoke and run investigate Mother’s sick idea of a joke; she was obviously torturing my father into getting up off his sick bed to stamp out her little campfire. Wouldn’t that have been just like her?”
Jamie’s arm came up like a shot. His clenched fist punched the air, over and over. “Lear is full of it, so don’t even think of backing him up! Even if he is trying to save Magdalene. Listen to me: Stella did not kill my parents. And Lothian did not do it—and neither did Magdalene, though some will try and make a case against her—”
“No!” I protested. “No one will blame Magdalene!”
“Shut up! Just shut the hell up!” Jamie drew a quavery breath. “The whispers will go something like this: Magdalene Grayson Forsythe followed America’s foremost painter all over the country, but when he wouldn’t leave his wife for her, she went off the deep end and fried both Waterstons to a crisp!”
I shook my head, nauseated, aware I’d been digging ditches big enough to hold Delaware County. Aware I was a class-A asshole. Aware Jamie had not forgiven me for shutting his father out after all. Aware he now intended to exact the supreme punishment by burying me in one of my own ditches. But first he was going to torture me and take his time doing it.
“So, yeah, thanks to you, Aidan, I think people are going to be looking to Magdalene. Didn’t you think someone might’ve noticed your reaction to Magdalene and my father going out on tour together, when, really, it made perfect sense? Regular people who saw you every day, man about town that you are? And speculate that you, the ultimate Waterston insider, knew something they didn’t?
“Aidan, you screwed up big when you chose to side with my mother, the so-called victim who blinded you to the point that you couldn’t see she was a psychopath thriving on watching everyone twist in the wind, herself included! She’s got you twisting now, doesn’t she? Setting this damn fire!”
My head throbbed. Jamie was right: Magdalene was on dangerous ground because of me. But I couldn’t implicate Lear publicly—that road led straight to me. I looked at where Jamie was looking, at the blackened husk of the mill house. It was a day of rare dazzling light. I had to make him see there was another way.
Jamie’s voice went tighter. “Magdalene’s having another child—and Lear Grayson is going to try floating the scenario that Stella set the fire because she was punishing my father for supposedly getting her sister pregnant—but I can’t let that happen! It’s not right: Stella is not dispensable just because she’s ugly and can’t speak intelligibly. So I must tell people the truth about my mother; otherwise Magdalene will be blamed.”
Another layer of grief settled over my nausea. Nothing was ever going to be the same again.
Jamie lowered his voice. “I couldn’t tell you about Magdalene and me because you were just so unreasonable about her, Aidan, especially after the suite came out. Now Magdalene won’t come to California with me. But she says if I don’t go, she’ll never speak to me again. Earl’s starting at your school this term. Magdalene’s hell-bent on you being his teacher.”
“That so?” I said listlessly.
“Magdalene says she won’t ever marry me, despite the baby. She says she’s not the marrying kind.”
I raised my chin. “That so?” I repeated.
“But I think the real reason Magdalene won’t marry me is Lothian.”
I stood taller. “Give Magdalene more credit. I suspect she’s telling the truth: she isn’t the marrying kind.”
“Well, it goes without saying I aim to change her mind—someday.”
I squinted into the horizon. “So you say.” I stole a sidelong look. The time had come—but Jamie’s brow had furrowed again, and my mouth dried when he glanced up at the second floor windows of Washington’s Headquarters. I watched him leach into paler versions of himself. Dissembling even as he spoke, Jamie’s words were faint:
“Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that my mother didn’t set a fire to get my father’s attention. Let’s say she did it to get someone else’s attention.” His gaze landed back on me. Prickles of fear rose on the back of my thighs. “When exactly was the last time you saw my mother alive, Aidan?”
I had to answer; I spoke slowly, choosing words carefully. “The afternoon of the fire. When she told me that you were leaving for California, and about your father moving back into the mill house. She told me he was ill. I found her attitude … curious. We nearly had words.”
“Go on.”
“That’s all. And when I got home to Washington’s Headquarters—”
“You went upstairs, and looking out your bedroom window you saw … everything? My mother? You saw my mother in the meadow, didn’t you? Trying to get your attention. Because hindsight being what it is, she knew she’d upset you and she wanted to make up. Look at me. Are you still protecting my mother, Aidan?”
“I didn’t see your mother in the meadow, Jamie.”
Jamie’s eyes widened. “So, then … you actually saw … Stella?”
It was one of those ambiguous answers, words that could’ve meant almost anything:
“I saw every Grayson but Stella in that one 24-hour period, Jamie, but unfortunately I never looked out a window until it was too late for your parents—I’m so sorry.”
“Wait—you saw every Grayson … you mean you saw Magdalene too? The night of the fire?”
We just looked at each other—and then I saw the sudden awareness of my guilt in his eyes.
“Bury what’s left,” Jamie said abruptly, stepping away from me. “The studio, too.”
I hadn’t been prepared for this. “But the studio is salvageable! Besides, the studio’s part of your father’s legacy and—”
“Knock it down! I don’t care and you shouldn’t either. The studio impedes your view of the meadow. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for impeding any more of your views, Aidan.”
Panic made me dogged. “But I’ve something to tell you! I have the Angry—” I was brought up short by saying just those few words aloud. Still, wanting to come clean and at least thinking of how I could tell Jamie I’d saved his father’s suite, was some reassurance that my sense of right and wrong was still relatively intact, surviving even my desire for Magdalene.
But damn, just how unfair had it been to me? Magdalene showing up at my door the night of the fire and pulling me into her distress?
Stop—something’s bothering me, Francis. I’m trying to stay with facts—but reading over that last paragraph, I realize it’s less than truthful. There’s another, truer picture coming to mind:
It’s nearly dark, and I’m just back from my useless run alongside the Brandywine. I see Magdalene on the side of the road, walking. It’s turned suddenly cold. I believe I might’ve invited her in. To warm herself by a fire, for something hot to drink. It might’ve happened that way, Francis, instead of her just showing up on my front stoop as if looking for me specifically.
Stop again—I’m remembering something else: Magdalene was crying.
So I ran outside, arms outstretched, and gathered her close. I groaned when she told me of her love for Jamie, and about their child, and what, she’d worried once I’d bundled her inside Washington’s Headquarters, was she to do next? She couldn’t go on the road with Jamie—the road was no place for two children. Should she let Jamie go, as in “once and for all,” accepting Sahar’s offer to allow the assumption that Matthew was her baby’s father? “To put it mildly,” that would also end things with Jamie … but maybe it was the best thing,
long term? Jamie’s was a talent the world rarely saw, and the world would continue missing out if he were based in New York the rest of his life. But was letting Jamie go the right thing for their child? Then there was the trust fund Sahar had offered to set up for the baby and Earl if she were to let Jamie go, without strings. Money was nothing to sneeze at, not when she had a family to think of, and money still short.
“Nothing is easy,” she told me, tears welling in her pale eyes. “Hard decisions are just that: they’re hard.”
Those eyes beseeched me … to do what? My head had whirled with confusion.
I heard myself say, “What is it you want from me, Magdalene? What can I do?”
She stared at me. “I just want you to see me. I’ve always wanted you to recognize me, Aidan. I’ve wanted that almost as much—no, more …” she didn’t finish the sentence.
I looked at her helplessly. “But I do see you.”
“No!” she cried then. “You never have, Aidan, not once! You’ve never seen the real me!”
And, oh god, that’s when it had happened, when I saw past every one of Magdalene’s glorious, pained features and onto every inch of her shiny, naked fear, and her fierce yearning to have it all versus her compulsion to pit right against wrong. When I’d felt her dilemma converge with the same yearning I had.
And I saw her, oh god, did I ever, knowing her as the other side of me—and my arms went around her again—but this time it was different.
Francis, to this day I cannot imagine how we put Jamie aside for even a moment—I mean, how did we forget him? We loved him.
I only know I forgot Magdalene Grayson had ever hurt me, because I was lost in seeing the real her. I forgot so many things, lost as I was in loving her and showing her I had seen her many, many times.
The Angry Woman Suite Page 25