The Angry Woman Suite

by Lee Fullbright

  Now he looked at me. “I know something about war, Elyse. I’ve lived through two of them, plus I’ve been studying our own war for independence my entire life … so I know the way you end one war isn’t necessarily the way you end another. But sometimes—sometimes you just get frozen and you can’t come clean and so you end up being isolationist by default.”

  “So, is that what happened the night of the fire, Aidan? Did you freeze? Did you actually see what Lear did, but then you froze?”

  He shifted his gaze to a spot over my shoulder. I waited, not really expecting him to tell me that he’d watched Lear Grayson kill the Waterstons. I was playing a game after all, weakening my opponent by wearing him down. But I was also getting too far off point. So I came straight out and asked Aidan if he thought Daddy was sick like Matthew Waterston, and like Jamie. Is that why Daddy shakes? I asked. Or was it the Grayson women who’d made Daddy so shaky?

  Later, after I returned to the Airstream and replayed in my head everything that Aidan told me, and what he hadn’t, matching it up against what he’d written in the journal, I suddenly saw what could’ve happened if I hadn’t gotten hurt in the fields, and Magdalene and Aidan hadn’t taken me and Bean on the road with them: I could’ve been hurt worse, because Huntington’s is progressive.

  And then I pulled away from looking at what Aidan had saved me from: Daddy’s full potential.

  I pulled away just like Magdalene had once pulled away from looking at Frederick. And like Papa had pulled away when my grandma died, understanding yet again that sometimes you just have to pull away in order to stay intact.

  At lunch Bean said, “We’ve missed you,” peering at me intently. “Your eye looks better.”

  Bean was so enamored of Stella, riding with her in the back seat of the car, hunkering down beside her at campfires, even sleeping next to Stella and not me, how was it possible she’d missed me?

  “Yes, we’ve missed you,” Stella echoed. Her pale eyes, like Magdalene’s, scrutinized me, too.

  “Aidan says we’ll be at Grayson House in two days. Isn’t it exciting, Elyse?” Bean didn’t sound excited. She sounded tense. “Can we ride in the trailer with you? I miss you, Elyse.”

  There was a place inside me reserved just for Bean. It had always been there, a haven we’d built together from shared fear. Its opening shifted like sand, and I went in and widened it more, holding its weight on my shoulders, taking on the blame, saying, “Bean,” and letting my sister back in, touching her shoulder and leaning into her. I flattened my face against her hair, coming home, taking deep gulps of Bean’s safe, familiar smell: I knew who I was with Bean. I was her protector, and she was my other comfort.

  ***

  We watched from the Airstream, crossing another state line, this one separating Pennsylvania from Ohio. Some hours later, Stella announced, “Look, everywhere there’s water, there’s the Brandywine.”

  “You mean those little streams we keep going over?” Bean asked.

  Stella’s speech was becoming easier for me to decipher. “But it’s a river in winter,” was how she answered. “We’re coming into East Chester already. We’re on Broad Street. And there’s the schoolhouse where Aidan used to teach. I didn’t go to school. I couldn’t. Mama said I’d cause a hoo-ha. Chadds Ford’s coming up next. And the other side of it is Washington’s Headquarters.”

  “The site of the battle,” I murmured. “The Battle of Brandywine.”

  “We lost,” Stella said glumly. “We lost the battle.”

  “Yes. We were outmaneuvered.”

  Bean asked what we meant, and I answered, “The short version is that the British were trying to take Philadelphia, which was being held by George Washington’s forces, who’d blocked the upper Delaware. So in order to even get to Philadelphia the British had to cross the Brandywine either at its mouth or one of its fords.”

  “Which was where George Washington was,” Stella chimed in. “At Chadds Ford waiting for the British.” She sang, “Sitting on the banks of the Brandywine, waiting for Howe.”

  I looked at Stella with new eyes. “Yes—but Washington was a Virginian who didn’t know the Brandywine terrain. It’s believed he was the recipient of faulty intelligence, that his scout told him Chadds Ford was the northernmost ford for crossing the Brandywine. But, actually, farther up the Brandywine, above Chadds Ford, were two more fords. And the British used one of those to cross the Brandywine. A pretty neat flanking movement because crossing a ford above Chadds Ford allowed the British to angle their way back down to Chadds Ford and into the Americans’ backyard. And that’s where they beat us on the banks of the Brandywine.”

  Stella nodded vigorously. “Where our flag was flown. The Battle of Brandywine was the first time the American flag was flown from a headquarters, ever.”

  “You like history, don’t you, Stella?”

  “Aidan teaches me things,” she said with pride.

  I patted one of her big hands. “I want to study American history, Stella. I want to be a historian like Aidan someday, maybe a professor.”

  Stella acknowledged this by sweetly saying, “But we did win the war.” And then, “There it is—Washington’s Headquarters.”

  It was a disappointment: a smallish stone house, and next to it was the carriage house where Lafayette had slept. I crossed over to the other side of the Airstream. “But the mill house. Or where—”

  “Lost,” Stella said sadly. “I never got to visit the mill house. Mama said it was hoo-ha. Here we go—Grayson Hill.”

  Grayson Hill was long and steep and lined with trees that hid the summit from view. Suddenly Stella shrieked, “My garden! What happened?”—and Aidan braked, and Stella scrambled, Bean and I right after her, alighting from the Airstream just as Aidan and Magdalene got out of the car, and Stella, a frantic fury on her knees screaming bloody murder, long arms flailing and tears streaming, began scooping up what appeared to be the remains of a fence hacked down to the earth. There was no garden. In fact, it looked as if there had never been a garden.

  “It was mine!” Stella wailed. “It was all miiiii—” She stopped mid-wail, mouth slack. A woman approached us, and although no one said her name aloud, I knew who she was. She smiled, but it wasn’t pleasant.

  “What are you doing here?” Magdalene demanded of her. “I assume this is your handiwork?”

  The woman was dressed in overalls and wore gardening gloves, and might’ve been attractive had it not been for her almost translucent yellowish teeth, and a front one with a chip out of it. I said her name softly: “Lothian.”

  Lothian didn’t answer Magdalene, and no one else spoke for the longest time, either. Aidan looked everywhere but at our little group, but Magdalene stared Lothian down, and Lothian stared right back at her.

  Lothian lost the staring contest with Magdalene. She glared at Stella then.

  “Sorry about the garden,” she said, not sounding the least bit sorry. “I know what it’s like to lose what’s yours. It doesn’t feel good, does it, Stella? So imagine how I felt, getting cheated out of what’s mine. Getting cheated out of Grayson House.”

  Magdalene stepped in front of the wide-eyed Stella. “You were cheated out of nothing, Lothian. You left Grayson House on your own—and then you were cashed out, fair and square.”

  “Hush money. And not enough for what I know.” Lothian removed one glove, then the other. Her weird yellow smile widened. “But first you made my life a living hell, Magdalene. Bringing Stella home from the loony bin, when you knew she hated me. You pushed me out, Magdalene, and every second of every minute, Miss Looney-Tunes here was stalking me, threatening me …”

  “Stella had reason to keep an eye out for you,” Magdalene said coolly. “She didn’t trust you, and give me one reason why she should’ve. She’d have never been committed that one time if not for you—if you hadn’t lied about her attacking you, after you burned Francis with that cigarette. How do you live with that, Lothian?”

  Lothian slapp
ed her gloves against the palm of her hand. “I see.” But it was clear she didn’t see anything. “Ah—but where are my manners? Welcome home, sisters. I’m afraid I haven’t quite finished preparations, but, regardless, welcome home. And may I present—” She turned and beckoned. An overweight man stepped into the clearing. “—Gordon LaFitte.”

  Lothian turned to Aidan then, whose expression had remained curiously serene—which was when I realized Aidan wasn’t the least bit surprised to find Lothian at Grayson House.

  “Your auctioneer for the suite,” Lothian sneered. “Remember, Mr. Madsen?”

  I got into the back seat of the car with Stella and Bean, and Aidan, still silent, cleared the last bend in the drive up Grayson Hill, and there, finally, crowning Grayson Hill, was Grayson House itself. It was an odd mix of architectural styles, with a columned wraparound porch, pale green shutters, and channels of stairs on both sides that merged with a roof studded by an outlandish number of chimneys. I’d seen the house before, of course, as a child when everything is huge, but Grayson House was still enormous, a monstrosity, like a graceful elephant. I craned my neck as Aidan maneuvered a parking spot at the apex of its horseshoe-shaped drive. I didn’t need anyone telling me that Lothian Grayson and Gordon LaFitte were right behind us, because Stella jumped from the car and ran up the porch steps as if she couldn’t move fast enough, and into Grayson House, leaving the front door ajar.

  Suddenly—“I’m going with Stella,” Bean said—and a premonition, long dormant, clawed at my throat. I reached for Bean—too late. She skipped up the porch steps after Stella and slipped inside Grayson House, carefully closing the front door after her, just as Daddy had always told her to do.

  I hung back, watching Lothian out the back window.

  “We’ll talk in a minute,” Magdalene said to her, getting out of the car. “After the girls are settled. Then you can be on your way.”

  I bent my head to see better. Lothian’s little teeth were like faded kernels of corn. I’d have quit smiling forever if I’d had teeth like hers.

  “But, Magdalene dear, we’re staying. And we’ve been staying. You didn’t think you could keep us away forever, did you?”

  I glanced out a side window. Aidan was standing beside Gordon LaFitte, eyes narrowed—and that’s when I got out of the car. Magdalene’s hand moved up my back. She didn’t introduce me to Lothian; she practically pushed me up the porch steps.

  “I said … later,” she threw back at Lothian, hurrying me across Grayson House’s wide porch. “Wait, dear,” Lothian called out. “Stella’s old room is taken, so don’t let Stella go in there just yet, or let those girls in there, either. Oh, and the boys’ old room is taken, too.”

  I looked up. Magdalene’s face had gone white. She turned around. “You’re in Stella’s room? Why on earth—?”

  “Let me see now,” Lothian said almost gaily. “Gordon is in the boys’ old room, where the caretaker used to be—we let him go, by the way. There seemed no point, once we had your ETA. And we’ve got medical supplies stored in Mama’s old room—and I’m not in Stella’s room, silly. I’m in my old room.”

  “So what’s this nonsense about Stella’s room?”

  “Well, dear, that’s where we put Jamie.”

  The hand on my shoulder tightened.

  “I want you out of here,” Magdalene said to Lothian. “Now.”

  “But don’t you want to know about the auction? How it played here? It was in all the papers—and it’s where Gordon and I met. A fabulous find, Gordon. So full of ideas. Especially when I told him I’d access to Waterston’s other portrait of you, the last Angry Woman. Gordon was very interested in seeing that one—and very forthcoming about our Mr. Madsen here and his auction. Gordon and I hit it off like, how shall I put it? Oh, I know. Like a house afire—”

  “I can explain!” A desperate-looking LaFitte had caught Aidan by his lapels and was holding him fast, talking a blue steak to Aidan, things I couldn’t hear. But Aidan had gone pale, too, and that’s when I knew we had real trouble brewing; that Aidan was no longer in control of a situation.

  “Go around to the side,” Aidan ordered me. “Up the outside stairs.”

  But wait!

  Of course that’s what I wanted to say—but didn’t. I also wanted to ask, Is it true? Is Jamie alive? But I was mute and stuck fast to the porch.

  “A house struck afire,” Lothian repeated. “Even with what little Gordon was told by your brilliant husband here, Magdalene—well, can we just say it wasn’t all that difficult figuring out Aidan Madsen’s always been the key to what happened to Jamie. But can you imagine? Jamie moved from God-knows-wherever Madsen’s kept him all these years, into the same loony bin where our Stella was. How ironic is that?

  “And I have Gordon to thank for finding Jamie. It was his idea to check hospitals under Aidan’s name. Yes, that’s how we found Jamie! Too rich, don’t you think?” Lothian’s upper lip curled. “Too timely.”

  “Shut up,” Magdalene snapped.

  Lothian’s dark brows knitted into a scowl. “You wanted the world to think Jamie was dead! You hit him on the head and put him in the loony bin so you and Madsen here could rape the Waterston estate! But I knew Jamie would’ve never left me. I knew you’d done something to him.” Lothian started to sweep by us.

  “Gordon,” she sneered at Magdalene, “had no trouble figuring out what really happened to Jamie. Sometimes fresh meat is all it takes to figure out something rotten, Magdalene. Fresh meat.”

  A lot of the day my life changed forever is a blur, especially this number of years later, but I think Lothian’s grand sweep lasted only a step. I can’t recollect exactly, because what took over my brain that very second was the sound of the front door opening, slow and creaky, and Stella’s big frame looming, casting a shadow. Her long arms crossed the door, barricading it, and on her face was a rage as pure as any I’d ever seen—and I’d seen a few in my time, on Daddy. I gulped and looked down—and there, almost hidden by Stella’s long skirt, on her elbows and knees, holding something in her clasped hands, peering out from between Stella’s big feet, was Bean. Her eyes were huge lakes of fear.

  I dropped to a crouch and mouthed the words, Bean, move away from everyone. Move way, way back.

  “You shouldn’t have done that, Lothian,” Stella said. Everyone’s attention shifted back to Stella, forgetting me and Bean.

  Wait till you see what I saw, Bean mouthed at me.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, get the hell out of my way,” Lothian said to Stella. From the corner of my eye I saw Lothian jam her hands into her overall pockets.

  I crouched lower. Two fat tears slid onto Bean’s cheeks. She opened her hands and showed me what I at first thought was a toy. Then my heart skittered up my throat.

  Put the gun down, I formed the words.

  It was on the bed with him.

  The conversation above us continued. “Back, back,” Stella warned Lothian.

  “Idiot,” Lothian sighed. “I’m home, Stella. So is Jamie. Live with it. And move.”

  Stella’s big feet didn’t budge. And neither did Bean budge. I moved instead, inching on my knees and elbows closer to Bean. “I’ll save you,” I crooned, trying to coax Bean out from behind Stella’s skirt.

  “You shouldn’t have done it,” Stella repeated.

  “I’d as much right taking Jamie out as they had putting him in!” Lothian suddenly shouted. “Magdalene and Aidan were trying to kill him, putting him in that place so they could keep their hands on the suite! You know the place, Stella! The loony bin. But me, I’m taking people out of the bin! Making them well again. So we can have music again!”

  Maybe it was the silence that made me look up. Aidan looked stricken, and, unbelievably, Stella now seemed uncertain. She clenched and unclenched her big hands.

  “He was a good boy,” Stella muttered. “Such a good boy. My very good boy.” Her pale blue eyes darkened. “But you made him mad, Lothian. You made him real mad.”r />
  And it was just as Magdalene reached out with both hands, one for Lothian and one for me, saying to me, “The back way, up the outside stairs,” that Lothian twisted away and ripped something from her pocket. I heard it, I heard the fabric rip, and that’s when things became a faster-racing blur.

  Stella screamed, “No!” and then there was a horrible gurgle, and then blood. Lots of it.

  Stella’s blood.

  I lunged for Bean, and I was halfway to her before I tripped, or was pushed, burying my head in Magdalene’s neck, almost knocking her over. The gun that had been in Bean’s hands went off, and Magdalene sagged to her knees and I went down with her, head buried in her neck, waiting for Magdalene’s next breath, which I neither felt nor heard because suddenly Aidan was on top of us, so that the next bang, right after Bean’s thin, high-pitched wail, was less loud.

  And then my world not only went still, it went incomprehensible and impossibly heavy—and I let it go.

  What choice did I have? I lay flattened against that porch floor, breath sucked out of me, because somehow the last play of this round had ended on the worst possible note. The master had gotten all his pawns in place first. And I’d lost my Bean—Bean, trying to protect Stella from Lothian, had shot Lothian with a gun from Grayson House. And then she’d shot herself so that Daddy wouldn’t be mad at her for being bad, for leaving doors open, for being ungrateful, for being unloving.

  The war was almost lost. Nothing left. Nothing but the dregs of a day followed by another useless day, and then another, and so on for the rest of my life without Bean.

  ***

  Aidan thought I didn’t know. He thought maybe I’d forgotten, like I had amnesia or something, because I didn’t talk about it.

  He was half right. I’d taken a page from Bean’s play book. I wouldn’t talk again—ever.

  Sometimes, when the light was just so, I imagined Magdalene sitting in the rocker at the side of my bed. I imagined I was in a room on the ground floor of Grayson House. A room lined with shelves, like a pantry might be, but now furnished with a bed and rocker, and a wing chair where I imagined Aidan sitting. And then I’d remember more, realizing neither Magdalene nor Aidan could really be in a pantry with me, because something horrible had happened. Something horrible had happened to everyone—and then I’d close my eyes and drift away.