The Angry Woman Suite

by Lee Fullbright

  Paper thin. Nothing lasts. Everybody and everything is paper thin.

  Aidan was the one to reassure Papa. “It is okay,” he said, putting a hand on Papa’s arm.

  Papa gave me a gentle nudge and I stepped forward, toward the biggest chess piece against the wall. “Hey, Uncle Buster,” I said.

  Uncle Buster shuffled out of the gloom, and even in the bad light I could see his simple face was dappled with sadness. He hugged me awkwardly and mumbled something about Bean, and then made a U-turn and receded back into darkness, between two figures that stood out in white, a nurse named Honey Fitzgerald, and a doctor. I knew the nurse from when I’d been hospitalized in San Diego, and more recently from eavesdropping and watching Grayson House from across the road.

  I looked back at Papa. Suddenly, I couldn’t help trembling.

  “Papa.”

  “Mein Liebes,” he said softly, his certainty evident again, like my childhood memories of him. “You must be brave.” The first words he’d said when Daddy had taken me to Biloxi, making me leave Papa behind. And the first words he’d said when Daddy had returned me home.

  “You must be like the mourning bird, do you remember? That it’s in the process of striving for her perfect song that she conquers fear and triumphs. Being brave can’t always put things in black and white, but it can be a pretty good beginning, Elyse—a fresh start.”

  I nodded, my heart like flapping wings, but brave like the mourning bird I started for the bed.

  “When the masks come off,” Papa said, right behind me, “that’s when we see the suffering, and that’s when kindness is called for.”

  I began seeing the complete and perfect pattern.

  “But the wisest game player,” Papa said, “never completely trusts in what he or she sees when looking through things.”

  I began seeing my freedom.

  “The wisest game player,” Papa coached, lips at my ear, “knows that when she does see through something, it’s usually only her perception of a truth that’s in constant movement. Truth is always moving, Liebling.”

  Truth was, in order to be free I needed to separate myself from what lay on that bed. But first I had to see him for what he really was. I had to see the truth of just Jamie, and then I had to let him go. I had to be the last piece standing.

  Six more paces, that’s all, but it seemed six miles. The woman on the edge of the bed stood up. I had to do what Mother had refused to do: I had to acknowledge her position.

  “Elena,” I said politely. She handed me a scroll of heavy paper and then stepped back, next to her aunt, Honey Fitzgerald, and allowed me past. Two more steps to the head of the bed—and then I looked down.

  The mask was completely off, and he shook everywhere, from his eyelids to his fingertips to feet that twitched beneath the blanket—but I saw straight through him. I saw that these tremors weren’t tremors of anger, and furthermore they’d never been tremors of anger. They were tremors fed by fear. His eyes opened, so I know he saw me. But he didn’t recognize me, sickened as he was by fear of the disease that struck Waterston men down. A disease often meaning dementia. Perhaps allowing him to become who Lothian told him he was when she’d taken him from the hospital Uncle Buster had checked him into on Aidan’s instructions?

  Because this was Lothian’s Jamie, the one who’d gotten away from the women, found by Lothian in the Portsmith hospital and brought back to Grayson House to be reunited with her.

  So of course he couldn’t recognize me. This Jamie had never met me.

  Still, I wasn’t completely taken in. Having already been around the block so many times, I had to at least consider the possibility he’d gamed Lothian and her delusion in order to get himself out of the Portsmith facility. Which meant I had to consider he was gaming me, and that he was no more sick with Huntington’s than I was. And that he damn well knew who was standing over his bed, looking down at him.

  Which was the truth?

  Despite all my previous attempts to control my life by categorizing him and Mother; putting them in boxes, visualizing him as a thing from another planet and my mother from a fairytale land, the truth—as Aidan once said—is that even the most benevolent person has a monstrous side—it really is just that simple.

  And I’d seen both his: the benevolent and the monstrous.

  The truth, as Papa said, is always moving.

  In the end, then, it didn’t matter if he was still trying to play with my head, or if he’d ever really meant to, because for the first time in a long while I wasn’t going where he was going. I wasn’t going where any of my old family was going. So much of what I’d known and believed had been wiped out.

  I was starting a new life. Tumbling into uncharted territory. Maybe even sunshine. Someday. And with Lothian out of the picture once and for all, this Jamie was also being liberated, because Aidan, even if he hadn’t planned for it to go this way, had seen to it. I would go on to college, but this musician rode with Elena and Buster in the band, in the land of music where he was king—and it was time.

  I looked at him for the longest moment, and I wept, knowing he of all people understood the piercing sadness of the win. And then I cut my second beloved completely loose, sending him back to the wilderness he’d come from, where he knew every twist in the road and every ford crossing a river that had been the reason for a battle lost before it began. I sent him back to his terrain, a terrain I’d made it my business to also learn, in order to keep a step ahead of my opponent. And when I spoke to him for that last time, declaring myself free in the process, my voice echoed in that tube of a room:

  “Goodbye, Daddy,” I said. “Checkmate.”

  AIDAN

  Magdalene was the one who told me Francis had vanished.

  “What do you mean, vanished?”

  She dropped into the chair nearest mine in the breakfast room. “I went to look in on him—the bed’s made. The wardrobe’s empty. No clothes, no suitcase. He’s gone, Aidan.”

  I ran. Through the kitchen to the foyer, throwing the front door open, counting, matching drivers to cars in the driveway. “How many cars? How many? Goddamn it, whose is missing?” And then I knew. “Elena and goddamn Buster! Dammit, they took Francis!”

  “Aidan—look!”

  I turned around. Magdalene stood just inside the big parlor. The wall behind her was huge, different-looking—and then I knew why. Magdalene’s portrait was gone. Gone! A square of paper had been tacked inside the rectangular outline where it had hung.

  Magdalene said, “Aidan, it’s Sahar’s watercolor. The one you gave Francis when he was fifteen, before he left for New York the first time.”

  I removed the watercolor from the wall, examining the old mill house rendered in muted grays and greens, the angles of the house feathered into the surrounding meadow grass, resulting in overall softness, almost illusion. I noted Sahar’s initials at the bottom, and then turned the paper over. There was handwriting. I adjusted my spectacles and read aloud, “‘Moonlight Serenade and you, forever.’”

  “But, Aidan, I don’t understand … why would Francis take my portrait? And why leave Sahar’s watercolor in its place? More to the point, why was Francis taken, Aidan? I told you it was not a good idea moving Francis out of California—”

  “But he wasn’t taken,” I heard Elyse say, sidling in-between us, surprising me further. “I was reading in bed and heard something, so I cracked my door a bit and saw them coming down the stairs: Daddy, Uncle Buster, and Elena. And Daddy walked out of Grayson House on his own two good legs, Aidan. No shaking at all. Not one quiver. He walked like a regular person. He did take Magdalene’s portrait before he left, but he didn’t tack Sahar’s watercolor up.”

  Magdalene looked even more stunned. “No shaking? You’re saying he doesn’t have—? But why did—?”

  “Daddy take your portrait? To remember you by is my best guess.”

  “You didn’t confront him,” I interjected. I didn’t dare look at Magdalene.


  “No, Aidan,” Elyse said. “There didn’t seem to be a point. I’d already said everything that needed to be said. But I was the one who tacked the watercolor up after Daddy left. I did it so the tacks wouldn’t leave marks, see? Elena gave it to me last night in Daddy’s room. I’m guessing Sahar’s watercolor is something Elena and Daddy passed back and forth through the years—like a message in a bottle. But now they don’t need it. They’ve got the real thing; they’ve got each other again.” She looked at me closely, and I’d have sworn she could see straight through my skin, onto the fiery red ball of guilt eating at my gut.

  “There’s more to tell, isn’t there, Aidan? But not here, right?”

  I invited Elyse and Magdalene to the cemetery.

  Magdalene declined.

  We sat on a bench beside the slabs set in the ground marking Matthew and Sahar Waterstons’ graves, and Jamie’s.

  Elyse said quietly, “I think I know why you had Uncle Buster bring Daddy to Pennsylvania, Aidan, to the hospital here. You wanted to get Daddy away from Mother because she’s not who’s best for him—she’s too fragile. I get that now—but, Aidan, please … you look horribly sad. A part of you must’ve suspected about Daddy, but there’s no way you could’ve known that the auction would bring Lothian out of the woodwork.”

  I reached into my breast pocket and withdrew the envelope, discreetly. I didn’t hand it to Elyse, sliding it under my trouser leg instead, away from the breeze. It was so remarkable, I couldn’t quite let go of it yet.

  “Right,” Elyse amended softly. “You knew.”

  “I never meant for Bean …”

  “I know.”

  “I only meant to lure Lothian—not for anyone to get hurt. I meant for Lothian to find my lawyers, because, look, Lothian had suspicions,” I allowed. “About Jamie and about my money, where I’d gotten it.” I took the plunge. “Because I was the one who gave Magdalene the money to buy Lothian out of Grayson House back in the 40's, after Jamie disappeared, when I got control of the Waterston estate.”

  “You mean after you put Jamie in the Portsmith asylum.”

  “Hospital—and Jamie put himself in the hospital. He made all his own arrangements; I just drove him there—and then kept his secret. But Lothian couldn’t move on after Jamie disappeared. She was a gigantic pain in the ass, nagging everybody about him. Why would he leave me? she’d ask. She blamed Magdalene. She blamed me, her mother, even Stella. So you can see why paying Lothian to stay away from me and Magdalene was worth every penny, even factoring in the possibility that Lothian might’ve connected the money to Jamie.”

  “But no way did you want Lothian confirming such a connection, or maybe even tracing it to the Portsmith hospital? Any more than you wanted Lothian knowing for sure that you had the Angry Women—”

  “And I just told you why. I didn’t want her on my doorstep.”

  “Right … what you’d hoped was that Lothian would take the money for her share of Grayson House and take a hike.”

  “Which she did—she took the money and gave up her claim to Grayson House. But then I did hear from her again. I heard from her way too often. And when I married Magdalene and converted much of the Waterston estate to cash, along with my own assets, I pegged Lothian for showing her hand once again, sooner or later. I preferred sooner. I wanted her taken care of once and for all.

  “So I planned the auction, making sure I’d get the right weasel-like personality working it—LaFitte—plus enough publicity to pull Lothian in. Not that it would’ve taken much publicity. Just say the words ‘Angry Women,’ and I knew Lothian would link the auction to Jamie and inundate the auction house with questions about where he was, and/or who exactly had the authority to sell the suite for Jamie. So the auction house higher-ups had been instructed to refer Lothian to my lawyers while I was in California.”

  Elyse bristled. “So coming to San Diego this last time was about Lothian and the auction? Not us? You came to California so you wouldn’t have to deal with Lothian personally?”

  The dig hurt. I took it—but Lord knows I’d tried for amends. Despite having to alter some truths into acceptable lies, I’d seen to it that only good had come from my having the Angry Woman paintings. I’d tried fixing things.

  But there was still much to do.

  “You misunderstand. Magdalene and I wanted to see all of you very much—but I couldn’t negotiate with Lothian myself. I needed someone objective for that. So the idea was for my lawyers to offer Lothian a sizeable settlement …”

  “To go away again.”

  “Far, far away … only this time to sign off on any future claims against me and Magdalene—that’s what was left out of the first agreement.”

  “Or what? What did you have to hold over Lothian’s head?”

  I met Elyse’s gaze unflinchingly. “Something never used before: the truth.”

  “About her father, you mean? About Lear Grayson setting the fire? Which Lothian actually knew because she saw him do it, right? Making her the accessory, because she never told anyone the truth about what she saw.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why did you do it, Aidan?”

  “Which it? Threatening Lear, or taking the Angry Women?”

  “Why’d you agree to help Lear steal the Angry Women in the first place?”

  “You know why. My loyalties had become misplaced. I’d come to resent Matthew, as had Lear, because I’d stupidly believed Matthew had ingratiated himself with Magdalene. And Lear felt Matthew knew too much about shenanigans at Grayson Investments, things Matthew didn’t need to know. So when Lear asked if I’d help him get the Angry Women away from Sahar before she cut them to ribbons—”

  “In order to save them for posterity, and the fortune they’d be worth when they saw the light of day again.”

  “Yes, right—anyhow, when Lear came up with the idea of a fire as a diversion, and also as an explanation for the suite’s soon-to-be faked demise, I of course agreed to help him, no questions asked, thinking—if I thought at all—that Sahar had bought the paintings back just to destroy them anyway, so where was the harm in taking them? That was my second mistake, not realizing the extent of Lear’s conniving. I’d absolutely no inkling he would try to erase the so-called blemish of a handicapped daughter by blaming Stella for everything and allowing her to be locked away for good! But my first mistake was switching loyalties. No—my very first mistake was not realizing Sahar and Lear were both insane.

  “So, hell no, nothing went as planned—and neither did my plan to flush out Lothian. I hadn’t counted on Lothian starting an affair with LaFitte first, ducking lawyers second, or even thinking to check out the Portsmith facility—but that was LaFitte for you, his idea, checking the Portsmith hospital for Jamie. And I definitely hadn’t counted on Lothian running into Francis there and being nutty enough to think she’d found Jamie instead! And then there was your unfortunate experience with Francis in California just before—and, well, put it all together and that’s where the forks in the road merged—”

  “At Portsmith. Where you’d had Uncle Buster stash Daddy.”

  “Right, at Portsmith.”

  “How much does Magdalene know?”

  “Not as much.” I extracted the envelope from under my trouser leg and handed it to Elyse. It contained the Samuel Adams letter Lear had given me at the start of the World War I. Its most recent appraisal had come in at a half-million dollars.

  Elyse didn’t open the envelope. But her lower lip quivered, reminding me of Francis—and sadness, knife-quick, cut me. I caught my breath and squinted into the horizon, and I imagined I saw the renegade yet soothing Brandywine even from this distance. A river, its history, its battleground, all the wars it had seen: that was my comfort world, the only thing I’d ever thoroughly understood in life.

  Suddenly, in a farther-off distance, I spied someone: a boy, maybe even a man, I couldn’t tell, he was too far away. He stood stock-still in the shadow of trees rimming the river’s o
uter bank, eyes fastened on the opposite bank, at the river’s crossing. And whose wouldn’t have been? A woman stood at that crossing. An angel in white, or an angel in a snit, as Francis had once described her. Hard and soft at the same time. Austere smile. Caressing eyes. I looked harder, bewitched, and then I looked back at the boy, marveling at his obvious connection to the woman, jealous of it, and I saw the beginnings of a familiar smile: the way his lips turned up at the corners and the skin around his eyes crinkled—pulling at my heart. His spider fingers reached for the sun and the moon and the stars, stretching across the span of river, touching home.

  He laughed then, and the woman laughed with him, and then she turned and smiled directly at me, lighting the river separating us—and I suddenly recognized how I’d gotten where I was and how far that was, but that she, out of everyone, remained the same, only better, and I’d been the god of scarcity, forgetting it for even a minute.

  We’d had losses: Matthew, Jamie, Earl, Francis, Bean. And we’d had murder. But we still had Elyse. And we still had Stella—and we had each other. And we’d learned a few things.

  We weren’t a total loss.

  I smiled back at Magdalene, but that was when the outline of the boy-man began receding, diverting my attention. Even as he dimmed, his eyes, oddly, grew larger, more intense, like magnets, drawing me so close inside his head that I almost disappeared with him, just as Jamie had disappeared into Francis, and Francis back into Jamie, so that even I hadn’t been able to tell the two apart at the end. It was with only the greatest effort that I averted my gaze, back to Magdalene.

  Or was it that Jamie and Francis finally let me go?

  But now I couldn’t find Magdalene. She’d also disappeared. I got up and began walking. Slow walking, because I had to save my strength. One doesn’t get this old without knowing the fragility of peace and family, the ins and outs, the darks and lights, the ups and downs. Already the battle cries from across an ocean could be heard. I looked into the river, as into tea leaves, foreseeing the din riding on the backs of clouds, carried by wind across the wires, sweeping the globe, taking up residence and putting down roots even on the banks of my beloved Brandywine, site of all our battles. I heard the protests on the rushing water. A new war was being heralded: Vietnam.