I sagged against the staircase and held my head a minute. My brain refused to do anything more useful than conjure up heartrending visions of my legatees reaching bleak old age with debts still unpaid, Greece still unvisited, hearts’ desires still unattained, hope proved a liar. Dave might talk contemptuously about nobody wanting the bequests, but Mr. Mulvaney must have been counting the days until that money would substitute for some of the long hours in his taxi, free him to have some life of his own—“go fishing.” No more days to count now; he was probably driving along this minute facing the fact that nothing was going to be any different for the rest of his life. And Dave—contemptuous or not, he needed paints and litho stones and expensive brushes and free time. And Sherry needed Oxford . . . I woke up, remembering I was concerned in that bit, too, and suddenly found my central worry sprouting as many heads as a hydra.
The thought unglued me at last from my spot in the passage and sent me rushing toward my room. I still had twenty minutes. If I dressed fast, then found Wynola . . . I found her coming out of the kitchen just as I reached my door.
“Oh, there you are, Georgetta!” she exclaimed. “I wanted to talk to you, but—”
“It’s mutual! Come on in.” I flung open the door and pulled her through it despite her protests that she had to get to the store before it closed. “You’ll make it. Talk. I know part of what it’s all about—Dave told me about the meeting.”
Wynola nodded unhappily. “I’m not going to get my sky-diving lessons. Of course, I always knew I shouldn’t count on it.”
“Don’t give up yet. It’s not certain—”
“Oh, yes it is.”
“But I mean—” I floundered a second, remembering Georgetta wasn’t supposed to know as much about this as I did. “I mean there’s sure to be a lawsuit or something.”
“No, we all decided against it.”
“You all—you what?”
“Decided we shouldn’t. You see, she had a daughter. None of us knew that. It wouldn’t be right to take the money from a person’s very own daughter.”
Slowly, it dawned on me what Dave had meant by “settled.” “You mean—you’re not even going to fight this?” I said blankly.
“No. Mr. Bruce wrote on a piece of paper that we hereby renounced our claims or something, and we all signed it.”
“But he can’t make you do that!”
“He didn’t make us. We wanted to,” Wynola said simply. “We all felt the same, when we heard about the daughter. Even me.”
It was a denouement that had never once occurred to me—though I might have expected it. Now what could I do? No more than a fireman poking around some dying embers.
Wynola, one eye on the cuckoo clock, assured me that nobody minded, really. “Miss Heater said it wouldn’t be right for somebody else to pay her debt. And Mrs. Hockins said she’s never bothered by a little rain.”
“What did Dave say?” I asked, knowing full well he’d said something idiotically high-handed.
“He said he’d rather fight his own wars in his own way.”
“Just so he gets to fight,” I muttered. He made jolly sure he did, too, keeping a chip like a badge on his shoulder, going around alienating people and provoking them and trying their patience—besides living from hand to mouth and scorning the world and wearing every other kind of hair shirt he could think of. He could scorn anything—except a challenge—he wanted things hard and hostile. It was all of a piece, right down to the life work he’d chosen—one so quixotic and near impossible that it kept him belligerent about it every minute. It struck me that belligerence might quite simply be what held Dave together, same as it holds a revolution. He acted as if he needed to fight—against odds just barely superable . . . But if that were true, the bequest wouldn’t have been good for him at all. It might have ruined him—just made him disintegrate for lack of inner glue.
It shook me a bit, seeing that so clearly. It was the first hint I’d had that Mrs. Dunningham could be anything but right. Then I thought—but Dave’s different. I asked Wynola what the others had said.
Well, they’d all said something unconvincingly gallant—except for Mr. Bruce, who’d kept his reactions to himself, as usual. Dr. Edmonds had remarked that he hadn’t time for travel, what with the new revisions on his textbook. Sherry had smiled and said it had been a nice pipe dream while it lasted—which first made me vexed with him because it didn’t seem belligerent enough, then vexed with myself because there I went again, comparing him and Dave. Mr. Mulvaney had said that knowing the little lady in her lifetime was legacy enough.
Mrs. Jackson, predictably, had found a good deal to say on the I-told-you-so order—but Wynola, quite unpredictably, informed me that she meant to have those sky-diving lessons anyway; she meant to earn the money for them herself, just to show her mother.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’ve just got to get a job. But I don’t even know how to look for one, or . . . Oh, I have to go get that milk! Could we talk tomorrow?”
I said yes, closed the door after her, and stood hatching one frantic scheme after another, discarding them as fast as they were hatched. It was too late for schemes, for anything. They’d already signed that paper. Still . . . nobody knew they’d signed it—no lawyers—and wouldn’t until office hours in the morning. The waiver was probably still in Mr. Bruce’s pocket. For an instant I longed for proximity and light fingers. But if I nabbed that paper, he’d just write another, and they’d all sign it again, like sheep—like lambs. I had to convince him they were being fleeced—that’s what. Go talk to him. Right now.
I glanced at my watch and began tearing off my uniform. Ten minutes—to dress, streak to the Rainbow, convince Mr. Bruce, and streak back before Sherry discovered where I’d gone and began to wonder why. I’d never make it. No matter, I’d think of something to tell Sherry—anything but the truth, as usual. Right now nothing mattered but to tell Mr. Bruce a thing or two.
A thing or two? I zipped my skirt and groped for my other shoes, feeling those little prickles along the cheeks and jawbone that come when the curtain’s going up and you’re not ready. I’d have to tell him everything. He’d never believe me until he knew all about Lorna Watson—by then he’d know all about Uncle Frosty, and me, and what I’d been up to on College Street and in his restaurant. Well, he’d just have to know. Let him sack me. Maybe I’d feel better if he did. I grabbed a cardigan and ran, six minutes before Sherry was due.
I ran all the way to the Rainbow, burst in, saw nobody but some late customers and Helen, whom I confronted. “Where’s Mr. Bruce?”
“Hmm? Oh, he’s gone. Dear, as long as you’re here, I wonder if you could—”
“No, I couldn’t. Gone where? Home?”
“Well, really, dear! I don’t know. He sent me out to mail that thing, then—”
“Mail what thing?” I said, feeling my heart drop like a yoyo, pause, shuddering, then begin the long climb back.
“I don’t know. Some paper he had,” Helen told me with great patience and a reproving look. “Addressed to an attorney’s office, so definitely none of our business, dear.”
Oh, no, not much, I thought. My heart gave up the climb and fell back, leaden, to the bottom of the string. Helen walked past me, saying something Helenish about where Mr. Bruce might be, but I didn’t listen. It didn’t matter where Mr. Bruce was now.
8
I left the café and started home. All I could think of was the ghastly, preventable futility of everything. People tried to help each other, went at it wrong, and ended by delivering each other mortal blows. Mrs. Dunningham should never have concealed her daughter’s existence—certainly not from the lawyer who wrote the will. He knew about “testamentary capacity” even if she didn’t; he could have worded the will to stand up in court. But she’d kept quiet, and see the result: bitter disappointment for the very people she’d
wanted to make happy. It wasn’t fair. It was never fair to hide the truth—not when it affected other people’s lives. I hoped I’d remember that, I hoped I’d never, never be guilty of any such . . . then I saw Sherry, just starting up the steps of the boardinghouse, and my spirits took a final sickening plunge as I realized why I was feeling so guilty already. What had I been doing, right along, but hide the truth—most especially from Sherry, whose life it had been affecting more and more since the first of August? That wasn’t fair either—to put it mildly.
He spotted me and came back down to the sidewalk, looking confused. “Hey, I was just coming to get you.”
“Well, I—had to go back to my locker. Forgot something.”
A feeble excuse, but it scarcely mattered. He said, “Want to walk over to the park?” and I just nodded and fell in beside him, absolutely miserable. I don’t think he noticed, at first; he seemed subdued himself, and I knew why. He was absorbing the blow of that scholarship turning to fairy gold and vanishing forever.
“Quite a mob scene when I came home,” I ventured, watching him sidewise as we walked along.
“Yes. It was—oh, sort of a meeting.” Sherry smiled down at me. “A piece of unfinished business got finished. That’s all.”
“Sherry—I know about it . . . Wynola told me,” I added hurriedly, dodging the issue one last time. “I’m sorry. You’ll not get the scholarship, will you?”
“No matter,” Sherry said. “I won’t have time to fool around with that sort of thing anyway—I hope.”
He glanced at me again, and I quickly glanced away—dodging that issue, too. But I knew I couldn’t keep it up. How could Sherry be sure he wanted to marry me until he knew which me I was? I didn’t know myself—part Georgetta, part Shannon, and Shan was nobody but part Dad and part Aunt Doris, part Mother and Uncle Frosty . . . We reached our bench by the statue, and I sat down as if my knees had given out on me. It’s really quite a ghastly experience, to feel your sense of identity slipping right away, leaving nothing but a sort of uninspired casserole of other people.
“Greensleeves, what’s the matter?” Sherry said in alarm.
“Nothing,” I said distractedly; then all of a sudden I gave up. “No, everything! Sherry, I’ve been lying to you. All summer long.”
Sherry blinked, then said reasonably, “Well, I know. But I wouldn’t exactly call it lying, just—”
“I would. I’ve got to quit it. It’s not right, it’s not even safe. I’ve got to tell you all about that girl you met on the street whether I want to or not!” Before he could be noble and talk me out of it, I plunged desperately into the middle.
The next few minutes were pure farce, though I certainly didn’t see it that way then. I was trying to tell everything at once, that was the trouble—and the result, for Sherry, was total confusion. I don’t know what he expected to hear. Surely not a garbled outpouring about somebody named Shannon Kathleen Lightley who didn’t come from Idaho at all, but from Dublin, Ireland, or maybe Mary’s Creek, Oregon, except she didn’t live either of those places, didn’t really live anywhere or come from anywhere. She was about as close to a complete stray as you could find, which was part of the problem, only it was no excuse, I realized that quite well, and I wasn’t trying to—
“You mean you’re an orphan?” Sherry asked, trying to grab a fact as it went by.
“My word, no! I’ve more parents than fingers. Anyway, it seems so. Actually, seven.”
“Greensleeves, you can’t have seven. I mean, there must be two principal ones.”
“Well, there aren’t. They’re each principal while I’m with them, which means nobody is, really. That’s the trouble—well, no, I guess it was mostly living all those different places and not actually belonging in any of them or wanting to go back to any of them. Though I do love London, if only it weren’t for Mother and that lot—”
“There! You said ‘Mother,’” Sherry said, faint but pursuing.
“Rosaleen O’Leary. She’s another part of my trouble. I don’t suppose she can help it, but—”
“Wait, who are we talking about now? Rosaleen O’Leary the British actress? The movie star? Why is she part of your trouble?”
“Because she’s my mother! I just told you.”
“Rosaleen O’Leary is your mother?” Sherry repeated in astonishment. “But you said your name was—”
I finally got everybody’s name and relationship unscrambled and explained about Dad’s work. “But that’s not the worst. It’s me. What I am. What I’ve been doing. Sherry, you won’t like me any more when you know!” I warned him wildly.
“Quit that. Just go ahead and tell me.”
“All right. Sherry, I’m a spy.”
There was a dead silence for about five seconds. Then Sherry said, in a firmly dispassionate voice, “Greensleeves, don’t you think you’d better stick to facts, now that you’re started on this? The more fiction you drag in—who are you a spy for? The Mary’s Creek Acme Detective Agency or somebody?”
“No, for Uncle Frosty, and it’s not fiction.” I clasped my hands together tightly. “I’ve been spying on you. I knew all about that will before I came here. I know a lot you still don’t. I’ve known all along about the daughter—and that you probably weren’t going to get to go to Oxford—and what you don’t know is that it’s probably my fault because of my spying!”
Sherry regarded me in utter amazement. “The will has something to do with Shannon Kathleen Lightley?”
“It has everything to do with her!”
“Well, then go on. But before I lose control and shake you, will you please start making a little sense? For instance, could we take these things in some kind of order? Alphabetically, if you want to. But begin at the beginning, and go slow! Better start when you were born.”
Since my birth did seem the real source of all the trouble, I said glumly, “All right. I was born.”
“Where?” Sherry demanded.
“Dublin. In a taxi on the way from my Aunt Kathleen’s flat to—my word, I was even born traveling. It’s just now struck me.”
“Don’t get off the subject. Who’s your Aunt Kathleen?”
I told him Mother’s sister, and just went on from that moment, chronologically—which on the whole seemed clearer than alphabetically. Sherry interrupted me frequently to ask questions—nervous ones, at first, then when he realized I wasn’t going to go skipping around confusing him, more and more interested ones, and once a sharp one.
“Wait a minute. Who is this Franz?”
I told him who this Franz was, and, in response to other sharp questions, what this Franz looked like, when I’d known him, where he was now, how I knew where he was now, and that I jolly well did mean to answer his letter and any others because I liked Franz.
“I can tell you do. What I can’t quite tell is whether I ought to be jealous.”
“Oh, don’t be silly.”
“Did he ever kiss you?”
“Yes, but it didn’t take, and we just dropped it. Sherry—Franz would be my brother, if I had one. Does that clear things up?”
Sherry muttered, and I went on, feeling obscurely comforted. I’d no right to—I was convinced that when I’d finished, Sherry wouldn’t care what Franz was to me, if anything. But I suspect it was along in here that I gradually forgot this was a confession and began to make a good narrative of it. It started with audience stimulation, which I’ll doubtless react to on my deathbed. Sherry was fascinated, as I’d foreseen, and I got fascinated making him know the people I knew, even throwing in anecdotes not necessary to the plot, just to entertain him. Yes, and I found myself thinking of it as a plot, too, same as in Uncle Frosty’s office that day—though I didn’t think much of the central character of this novel. Still—I caught myself reflecting—if one wrote it, one could fix all that.
Well, that woke me up. I wasn�
��t writing a novel, I was trying to tell the truth. And I was editing. Whitewashing. Embroidering. I was making it fascinating. It shocked me so that I quit talking.
Sherry waited a minute, then said, “Go on.”
“I will,” I told him grimly. “I’ll go back, too. I’ve been lying again. I haven’t told you what that girl is really like.” Scrupulously, I told him, sticking to bare, unwelcome facts. It was worse than a session with the dentist, but when I finished, there was Shan—the perennial malcontent, cross-grained, sharp-tongued, short-tempered, unliked and unlikeable, a stiff-necked American to Europeans, a snobby European to Mary’s Creek, a trial to Aunt Doris, a problem to Uncle Frosty, and to Dad an unreasonable, impossible teenager who fought tirelessly all his efforts to educate her and give her something she could keep. I quoted a few of Dad’s more astringent remarks about my character, winding up with my own version of it as all thorns outside and protoplasm within. Then, sulkily, because I was entirely miserable by now, I explained about Georgetta and confessed my treachery. “So, do you see? Not only is it my doing you’ve missed that scholarship, but I’m nobody you even want to know, much less be in love with. I release you from everything. You don’t even have to walk home with me. I’ll understand perfectly, and I don’t blame you at all.” I stood up.
Sherry pulled me right back down. “Don’t talk foolishness.”
“I’m not talking foolishness!”
“You’re talking like a perfect idiot, and you are one, if you think any of this is going to make the slightest difference in the way I feel about you.”
“But, Sherry! Oh, how discouraging! Didn’t you listen to anything I said? Will I have to say it all over again?”
“I heard everything you said. I’m beginning to understand you a little for the first time, and that’s great! Why should it put me off?”
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