Little Death by the Sea

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  Maggie removed her hand.

  Was it because Maggie loved Elspeth so much that she couldn’t imagine anyone else rejecting what she had to offer as a mother? Or was it because Nicole seemed to be doing exactly what Elise had always done before her? Which was to reject the two people that Maggie had held most dear. And the anger that Maggie had felt at Elise for turning away from them, for hurting them, was revisited on Nicole, who seemed, in her own way, to be doing exactly the same thing.

  “Darling?”

  Maggie turned from the child to see her mother enter the room and her heart ripped at the sight of her. Elspeth had had a hard night. Her beautiful face was weary and lined.

  “I’m here, Mother. Can I help do something?”

  Her mother moved into the room in a way that reminded Maggie of someone gliding up to a dance partner in expectation of a waltz. Elspeth stood next to the couch, her hands folded calmly on the back of it. She was wearing a blue silk shift with no jewelry. Her hair looked impeccable, as if she’d spent some time with it that morning.

  “Has Brownie left already?” Elspeth asked.

  “He left after breakfast. He had to get back and do some stuff at his place. He’ll call later, he said.”

  “I’m sorry I missed him this morning.”

  “Is Dad...where’s Dad?” Maggie’s gaze flicked behind her mother through the door to the hallway as if expecting her father to walk through.

  “He’s gone to the club this morning, dear.”

  “The club?”

  “We deal with things differently, Maggie...”

  “Yeah, well, the police will want to talk to him. And you too, Mother.”

  “They said they’d call first.”

  Boy, that’s sweet of them. Maggie was surprised. She hadn’t realized the police made appointments during an investigation. She thought they just barged into your life and started rifling through your things and asked you personal questions and then accused you of all manner of things you’d never even dreamed of doing before they put their case together and found the bad guy.

  “You’ve talked with them recently?” Elspeth asked.

  Maggie wasn’t sure her mother really needed to hear all there was to tell.

  “Detective Burton of Hom...of Homicide,” she said, looking away. “He wasn’t very specific with me.” She shrugged. “Probably didn’t think he needed to be.”

  “I see.”

  “Are you going to come in?” Maggie asked.

  Elspeth shook her head and tried to smile.

  “I think I’ll read in my room today, darling, if you don’t mind. Annie will be here shortly to look after Nicole. How are you, ma petite?”

  The child turned and looked at her grandmother.

  “What are your plans for the day, Margaret?”

  Maggie shrugged and felt suddenly very tired.

  “I don’t know. I might go back to my apartment and pick up a few things. Detective Burton said I could. They’ve got some people there, I guess, to help me. Then, I don’t know.” She turned away and smoothed out the creases in her linen trousers. They belonged to Elspeth. “Probably just come back here. Maybe I’ll read for a while too.”

  There was a brief silence before Elspeth turned to leave.

  “Mom, I’m so sorry I didn’t call you about Elise.”

  “I know, darling. It doesn’t matter.”

  “I know it does. I don’t know how I can live with myself.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Maggie. There’s nothing to be done for it anyway.” Her mother’s back seemed to stiffen during the exchange as if her body couldn’t lie as easily as her voice could. “Let’s not talk about it in front of Nicole.”

  Frustrated, Maggie nearly blurted out that they might as well make sure they were out of earshot of the couch and the Tiffany lamp too. She caught herself and nodded miserably, her eyes once again falling on Nicole Newberry.

  “She doesn’t know,” Maggie spoke the question flatly, knowing the answer.

  “There doesn’t seem much point,” her mother said. Maggie looked up at her with concern but Elspeth merely smiled wanly and waved away her daughter’s disquiet.

  “I’m off now. If you’ll stay with Nicole until Annie comes.”

  “Of course.”

  “Dinner is at six, as usual.”

  “Okay.”

  Maggie watched her mother’s retreating back and felt worse than before Elspeth had come downstairs. She looked back over at Nicole who was also watching Elspeth’s departure.

  “She’s very sad right now, Nicole.”

  The little girl blinked once and looked at Maggie.

  Was it a malevolent look? Did she know Maggie cheated her out of her one last chance to see her mother? Did she, unencumbered by the love and duty that bound Maggie’s parents, feel free to hate her aunt for her stupidity and selfishness? For surely selfishness had been a major part of it, Maggie thought. The notion of presenting Elise to her parents as if she were a beribboned parcel had loomed dominant in Maggie’s daydreams. Why had she agreed with Elise that she should hold off her parental homecoming? Not because she’d been afraid of how her parents would receive a bedraggled, bedrugged Elise. But because she had wanted them to believe that she, Maggie, was giving Elise back to them. And somehow, she felt that Nicole knew it, even if her mother and father did not.

  When the doorbell sounded, it was so gentle and musical that, for a moment, Maggie thought it was one of the many house clocks pleasantly, unobtrusively heralding the hour. Elspeth had a passion for clocks of all kinds and collected them to the point where her husband had finally forced her to weed them out of the house. It was true, Maggie thought as she got up from the heavy Queen Anne’s arm chair to answer the door, Brymsley had begun to resemble a large and noisy clockmaker’s shop a few years ago. All the ticking and chiming and onerous hourly and quarter hourly booming had nearly driven her poor father mad.

  Maggie walked to the end of the sitting room to where two pairs of French doors led out to the garden. Although not the formal, main entrance to Brymsley, the garden entrance was the closest portal to the driveway and so the one most commonly used. Besides, Elspeth insisted that she liked the idea of visitors enjoying her garden as they walked to the door. She thought it much friendlier than the tedious, precision-manicured box hedges and bricked path that led to the front of the house, with its massive columns and imposing porticoes.

  “A little bit of Tara goes a long way,” she liked to tell her daughters. “The point is not to intimidate people.”

  “Just to have more money than them, that’s all.”

  Elise had never given her mother much quarter.

  Maggie peered through the panel sheers in the door and, seeing nothing, she pulled open the doors and stepped outside. Instantly, the warmth and humidity of the morning struck her and made her catch her breath. The air conditioning had given her goose bumps up her arms and legs but dissolved upon contact with the moist Southern air. Maggie stepped out onto the flagstone patio that curved in a crescent away from the French doors and out toward her mother’s garden. Her eyes followed the natural line of the garden which formed a cul de sac of flowering shrubs and borders, a niche of peace and serenity. A small stone bench sat nearly hidden among a cluster of spirea, forsythia and camellia. Vines of thick, glossy English ivy snaked along the ground and up and over the high drystone wall that contained and cozied the whole garden. The fragrance from the nearby rose bushes—aggressively lurching their way up a rickety trellis to the right of the French doors—was light and sweet on the heavy Georgia air, air so oppressive with heat that you could almost see it wafting around you like thick curls of smoke.

  Maggie scanned the garden, unconscious of the fact that she was holding her breath. A blooming bush of American Beauty roses shook slightly in the corner of her eye. She turned, her hands still clutching the handles of the French doors, and saw Laurent standing next to the bush of blood-red roses.

  Chapte
r 9

  1

  Maggie stood quietly, her breath sucked out of her. He was wearing a blue jersey with his hands tucked in the pockets of his tan cotton trousers. His eyes smiled at her, tired eyes, sympathetic eyes.

  “Zo,” he said, softly. “I am here.”

  In a fluid moment, she released the door handles and moved out onto the bricked, terrace steps. Laurent caught her in his arms and lifted her off the ground. She wrapped her arms around his thick, sunburned neck and lay her cheek against his chest. For right now, she didn’t care to see his face, examine his eyes, hear his story, or mark his changes. It was enough that he’d finally come.

  “Ma petite,” he murmured. He held her very carefully for several moments and then set her down and looked into her eyes. “I know it is very bad for you now, cherie,” he said. He squeezed her tightly and kissed her on the ear. “Laurent is here. It will be all right now, comprends? It will be all right now.”

  Maggie kept her hands firmly on his arms as if afraid to let him go a second time. He was so looming, she had the odd sensation that he blotted out the morning sun at the same time he brought light into the garden.

  “I can’t believe you’re here.” She said. “After six months of no word, no letter. I mean, don’t they have telephones in the south of France anymore?” She felt her heart crumble into his hands as she looked at his handsome face, so longed for, so well remembered, and loved. “It’s such a rich place,” she finished weakly, “I’d assumed those would be the first things they’d get.”

  “I told you I would come,” he said, his eyes probing her face, as if to memorize her features.

  “Yeah, I guess you did. Look, where are you staying?” Maggie asked, glancing behind her to see if Nicole were still in the living room.

  “I stay with you, mais, bien sûr!” Laurent smiled at her and, involuntarily, she felt her heart expand in her chest in an attempt to encompass her joy. Bien sûr.

  “How did you find me? How did you find Brymsley?”

  Laurent waved away the question as if it were a droning fly about his head.

  “Pfut! Your parents’ address is on the cheque, is it not? A house so big as this is not façile...so easy... to hide? And Laurent knows where to find his cherie. Come, I think I am meeting la mere?”

  “Margaret? Is everything all right, darling?”

  Maggie turned to see her mother standing in the French doors, Nicole positioned at her side like a miniature sentinel.

  “Mother!” Maggie dropped her hands from Laurent’s arms and turned to face her mother. “This is a good friend of mine. I...we met in France. He helped us get Nicole back...he was one of the two....Laurent Dernier, this is my mother, Elspeth Newberry. Mom, this is Laurent.”

  Elspeth Newberry stepped forward onto the flagstone pathway and offered Laurent a cool white hand. He shook it briefly in his sunburnt hand and murmured: “Enchantez, Madame. I am in love with your daughter.”

  Maggie blushed and touched Laurent lightly on the sleeve as her mother retracted her hand.

  “I see,” she said evenly, her eyes darting to Maggie, her smile wavering but still intact.

  “You have not been talking about me, Maggee?” Laurent wagged a finger at her and smiled again at Elspeth. “I am not a very good, what is it? Writing of letters?”

  “Anyway,” Maggie said lightly, wanting, for some reason, to break up the moment. “Let’s go inside, shall we? Mother?”

  “I am so sorry about your daughter, Madame Newberry. Je me regret, Madame.”

  Elspeth’s eyes filled quickly .

  “Merci, Laurent,” she said, turning away to lead the way back into the house.

  Laurent looked at Maggie: ça va? She nodded and touched his arm again. Ça va, she thought. And then some.

  2

  Laurent pushed away the fennel salad, his dish smeared with olive oil and a last crust of bread. Madame Newberry had seen to it that the big Frenchman would not be homesick or hungry his first night at Brymsley. She had had her cook prepare a rabbit smothered in rosemary, followed by mini-crock pots of honey and saffron cremes.

  Their unexpected guest had been placed between Maggie and Nicole at the dinner table with Elspeth and John Newberry facing the three of them. Nicole’s mousy brown hair was gathered back in a French braid. Gold velvet ribbons interlaced the plaiting, and she wore a simple chocolate-brown shift. The little white Peter Pan collar displayed her small head like a cabbage on a platter. Maggie could see flecks of gravy on the linen napkin that had been tucked into the child’s collar and found herself marveling that Nicole was as neat as she was. For someone in the throes of autism, she thought curiously, she’s remarkably tidy.

  Maggie wondered, too, what Laurent thought of Nicole. The child sat at the dinner table between them, quiet and seemingly unseeing, her only movements the slow, uncaring ones that carried her spoon from her plate to her mouth. She could be eating dog food, Maggie thought, so little did she seem to care about what she did.

  After dinner, the rest of the family had retired to another part of the house, to read or watch TV. Laurent’s meeting with Maggie’s father had been a little more successful than the one with her mother. John Newberry was jolly and kind, if a little wounded, in general, and had welcomed Laurent wholeheartedly into his home. Maggie wondered, with surprise, if he and her father might even become friends someday?

  Having finished her own meal, Maggie had been happy to sit with Laurent and watch him while he sopped up the last flecks of the savory sauce. He looked around for the bottle of Clos des Papes and noticed that they’d finished it during dinner. He shrugged and removed his napkin.

  “Becka will bring in coffee in a bit,” Maggie said, as she leaned back into her chair. She had almost gotten her fill of looking at him and reassuring herself that he had, indeed, not forgotten her. Now that he was here, it didn’t occur to her that she might not be emotionally ready for him. He intended to move in with her the day after tomorrow when the cops had finished dusting and scraping her flat for evidence. (How was she ever going to eat omelets and nachos or watch inane sit-coms in the same room a murderer had stood threatening her sister?)

  The relief of having him with her again, the affirmation that she had not misjudged him or her own feelings had, for the moment, obliterated the thought that perhaps she wasn’t quite prepared to have him move in with her.

  “I like your maman and papa very much. They are good people.”

  “I know.”

  “They love that little girl, too. Such a sad little girl. Tch-zut!” Laurent sucked his teeth and shook his head.

  “I’m not sure she’s really Elise’s.”

  “Not Elise’s?” A thin veil seemed to come down between them. Laurent looked tired, guarded. “That is impossible! Of course she is your sister’s daughter. Roger has taken her from—“

  “I know, I know, Laurent... I just...sometimes I think...oh, never mind. I’m bats. It’s just so hard to think that I’m really and truly related to her. She’s so...she’s nothing like any of us, you know?”

  “You must give her time, Maggee. You are so impatient about everything, I think.” He smiled wearily at her.

  “Why did you come, Laurent?” Maggie leaned across the starched white tablecloth towards him. He pulled out a blue packet of Gitanes and lighted one up with a box of matches. He held the smoking match between his fingers and looked at her inquiringly. Distractedly, she got up and walked to the large walnut hutch in the dining room and began rummaging around for an ashtray. “I mean, nobody’s happier about it than I am, but do you have business in town or what?”

  Becka, a middle-aged black woman with shiny, dark skin nearly the color of the hutch, entered the room carrying a silver tray with a silver coffee pot and creamer. The sugar bowl was a delicate light blue china with matching cups and saucers.

  “Hey, Becka.” Maggie pulled a crystal ashtray from one of the drawers of the hutch and returned to the table.

  “Your Mo
ther and Father havin’ their coffee in the livin’ room,” Becka said as she unloaded her tray.

  “You are the chef, Madame?” Laurent stood up from his chair.

  “Don’t be standin’ up, now. I cooked it if that’s what you mean.” Becka hid a smile.

  Laurent kissed the tips of his fingers with a loud smacking noise.

  “C’est magnifique! It was better than anything in Paris or the Cote D’azure, absolutement. Merci beaucoup, Madame.”

  Grinning outright, Becka hugged the tray to her breast and backed out of the room.

  “Well, I’m glad you liked it. G’night Miss Maggie.”

  “Goodnight, Becka. You outdid yourself. It was delish plus.”

  The cook exited the dining room with a loud swish of the swinging door.

  “Marveillieux, that woman, she—“

  “Yes, yes, wait’ll you taste her grits and eggs. Listen, Laurent,” Maggie thumped down the Waterford ashtray in front of him. “...I mean, as you were saying? About being here on business?”

  “But I am not here on any business.” Laurent looked at her with surprise. “Except you, ma petite. I am here to be with you. You are my business.”

  Maggie felt a flush of pleasure creep up her throat to her face. She scraped some breadcrumbs from the table with her hand and emptied them into Laurent’s ashtray.

  “You know,” she said. “I never did get straight what it is you do for a living. I mean, can you afford to just take off time like this?”

  Laurent poured her coffee and then his own before answering. He held up the china creamer and she shook her head.

  “I have been working for the government, comprends?” He poured a hefty dollop of cream into his coffee. (Hadn’t these people ever heard of cholesterol?) “Maintenant, I am en vacances, oui? On vacation? For many weeks.”