I’ve often thought that I should have let it hit me. Except I didn’t want to hurt anyone else. Never again.
As it was, I veered that beautiful LaSalle I’d inherited from Yasha off the road and down a rocky embankment, tossed about in the cab like an unwanted rag doll as it careened toward destruction.
The last thing I remember was the gigantic boulder barreling at me from the other side of the windshield.
* * *
* * *
“Ma’am, are you all right?”
“Careful, I think she’s coming to.”
“We need to get you out of the car, ma’am. Hold on.”
I wanted to open my eyes, really I did, but they refused to cooperate as concerned voices floated toward me. Part of me wanted to respond, but another part—the jagged pieces that were exhausted after being alone so long—was perfectly content to remain in the darkness. That is, until sensation flooded back into my body.
The feeling of being in a position that wasn’t quite right.
The wet stickiness that itched down my face.
The pain.
It came from so many directions that I couldn’t pinpoint the cause, just the general sensation that I shouldn’t move.
A bark of pain escaped my lips when firm hands moved me. Only when I felt solid ground did I crack open my eyelids and blink away a blur of anxious faces that took longer than normal to focus.
“You’ve had a bit of an accident.” A kindly older woman frowned down on me. She dabbed something soft on my forehead. “This looks worse than it is—a head wound always gushes like a geyser. Harry and I here were headed toward New Haven when we saw your car smoking and stopped to help. Do you remember what happened?”
My groan was inconclusive.
“Well, if there was another car,” said the man—Harry, presumably—“it’s long gone.”
Even in my battered state, I tried hard to remember if there even had been another car. Had my mind concocted that bit?
“Is there anyone we can call for you?” the woman asked. “Someone to pick you up?”
The world was solidifying; I could shake my head and even sit up. The ground’s dampness from recent rains seeped through my skirt and my teeth started to chatter. Or was that the shock of it all? “There’s no one,” I whispered. “Just me.”
My shivering prompted the woman to retrieve a musty blanket from the trunk of her car. I was probably going into shock, a state that only worsened when I caught sight of Yasha’s old LaSalle.
What was left of her, at least. Which wasn’t much.
I moaned again, clamping my eyes shut against the carnage. The poor girl was absolutely decimated, her face and front wheels crumpled in a protective hug around the boulder that had aimed for me, the driver’s side door an open maw from where these kindly strangers had dragged me out. The car that Yasha had so adored—my last connection to him save the gold-and-ruby ring that never left my finger—was now destroyed. By my hand.
I was a reverse-Midas, doomed to destroy everything I touched.
The kindly bystanders loaded me into their car and drove me back to the motel, even helped me trundle into bed and called their own doctor to come examine me.
I didn’t protest when he flicked my vein and filled it with a syringe of something sweet.
If only those Good Samaritans had known what manner of demon I really was. They’d have let me bleed out on the side of the road.
* * *
* * *
My life during that time has always felt a bit like Picasso’s Guernica, a black-and-white charnel house of all-encompassing gore and destruction. That last car accident was my final wail of agony; I was the screaming woman surrounded by the flames of dismembered, shattered pieces of my life.
Except if you look closely at that painting, there’s something few ever notice: a dove scribed on the wall behind the bull. Part of its body comprises a crack in the wall, through which the brightest of light shines.
A symbol of hope, even in the darkest of times.
My hope came in the form of a letter, delivered by an eager young bellhop.
“Miss Bentley, it’s Jack from the front desk,” he announced through my hotel door one day. I had physically recovered from my last car accident but was lost in a dangerous malaise. “Your mail is piling up, and one letter is stamped FBI. I brought it up just in case it was important.”
“Slide it under the door.”
“But I have something for you from the kitchen. It won’t fit under the door.”
I considered ignoring Jack and staying in bed, but then he’d probably return with a key to make sure everything was all right. Apparently, he’d never heard the nursery rhyme—not even all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could put back the pieces of my life.
I trudged to the door and cracked it open enough to poke my face through. To his credit, young Jack didn’t blanch at the sight of such a terrifying old woman. Well, at least not too much.
“Here’s your mail.” He handed me a stack of envelopes. “And I took the liberty of bringing you tomato soup from the kitchen—I thought you might be sick since you haven’t left your room in so long.”
Damn it all if my stomach didn’t give a banshee growl at the aromatic steam wafting from that tomato soup. My mind might be weary of living, but my body hadn’t yet received the self-destruct message.
“Thank you, Jack,” I said. “That’s very kind of you.”
After he departed with a tarnished quarter’s tip, I closed the door and tossed most of the meager pile of mail on the bedside table, settling in to sip my soup while opening the letter from the FBI, dreading another subpoena or court summons. I was blowing on a bite when my eyebrows hit my hairline.
It was from J. Edgar Hoover himself, in response to the message I’d sent him several weeks ago. Before I’d destroyed the LaSalle.
I scarcely remembered what I’d written, only that I’d sent it out the same day I’d received a rejection for a teaching position at a Catholic girls’ school. The school superintendent had claimed that my loyalty was still in question, that she couldn’t hire someone who might not be a dutiful and patriotic American.
Essentially, she’d thought I was a liar.
Well, I might have been drunk or crazy—let’s be honest, probably both—but I’d done the only thing I could think of then: I’d written directly to Hoover and asked if he might write a recommendation on my behalf.
To my shock, he had.
Dear Miss Bentley,
Your cooperation with this Bureau is a matter of public record and a commendable service to your country. I am happy to provide the same statement that I made before Congress in 1953: All information furnished by Miss Bentley, which was susceptible to check, has been proven to be correct. She has been subjected to the most searching of cross-examination, her testimony has been evaluated by juries and reviewed by courts and has been found to be accurate.
Sincerely yours,
J. Edgar Hoover
I traced a finger over the words, imagined him writing them.
A commendable service to your country.
Commendable instead of condemnable.
That short and serviceable note on official FBI letterhead was notarized proof that the director of the FBI believed in my loyalty. It wasn’t enough to stop the torrential floodwaters of guilt that had been drowning me, but Hoover’s tiny buoy bobbing valiantly against the storm was something to cling to: the possibility that maybe now, with proof of my patriotism, I might find a headmaster willing to hire me.
To start anew.
I considered waiting to open the rest of the mail—most was likely rejection letters—that is, until I saw the Manhattan address poking out of the pile.
The Payne Whitney Clinic.
I don’t know what I was expec
ting—the Payne Whitney was the mental institution housed inside New York Hospital where I’d gotten my chin patched up—but I certainly wasn’t anticipating the handwritten message that followed.
(Brace yourself, Catherine. I told you I’d tell you about all this at the end. Well, here we are, as promised. Don’t you dare interrupt until I’m done.)
Dear Miss Bentley,
I’ve been meaning to write you since that serendipitous day you visited New York Hospital. I’m so glad I was able to connect you with our patient Mary Tenney at the Payne Whitney Clinic. However, I must apologize—I should have done more to prepare you for the fragile state of her mind following her suicide attempt. Oftentimes, family and friends expect a full recovery of their loved ones, but unfortunately, such a transformation wasn’t possible in Miss Tenney’s situation. I truly believe the fine staff here at Payne Whitney did our best to provide for her comfort and treated her as well as we could.
Regrettably, I write to inform you that Miss Tenney is to be transferred at the end of the month from our facility to the state-run Willowbrook State School. Unfortunately, although Miss Tenney arrived at our state-of-the-art institution with the means to finance her stay, her funds ran out some months ago. I hid this unfortunate situation from the hospital’s board for as long as I could—I find it detrimental to remove a patient from their routines and familiar surroundings—but a recent audit brought the situation to light and has forced her relocation.
As you seemed to care about Miss Tenney very much, I thought it pertinent to inform you that Willowbrook is well over capacity and there have been recent reports of physical and sexual abuse of patients. When I visited some months ago, I was shocked to find the majority of patients naked and covered in bedsores while wallowing in their own feces. I worry for Miss Tenney’s safety if she is moved to such a facility and hoped that by alerting you, you might find some solution that would spare her these potential horrors.
Yours,
Dr. Richard Johnson
I was shaking by the time I finished reading. Terrified that perhaps Mary had already been moved, that in my malaise this letter had languished downstairs for too long. I nearly cried out in relief to find that it was only postmarked five days ago. There were still two weeks left until the end of the month. Two weeks to find a solution.
And absolution.
I’d lied and committed treason against my country, ratted out my fellow spies and let them die. Yet, my greatest sin was neglecting my sacred promise made to my best friend.
Sinners make the best saints.
It had been Mary’s mantra. And now? Well, now it would be mine.
I knew then that I had to pick myself up. To keep my promise to Mary.
And her daughter.
20
NOVEMBER 23, 1963
10:01 P.M.
“Mary Tenney was in a mental institution?” Cat gaped, feeling as if the wind had been knocked out of her. Elizabeth merely stared at her with the same expression Cat had seen in the black-and-white photographs of her facing off against the House Un-American Activities Committee. “And she had a daughter? But you said she had a son—”
“I lied.” Elizabeth shuffled to the kitchen, retrieved a file from a drawer. Her voice was fragile and brittle, and there was no color to her face at all. It was as if telling these final pieces of her narrative had leeched something vital from her. “You are Mary Tenney’s daughter. And I met you for the first time in 1942. On the day you were born.”
This was what Cat had been waiting for, and she thought she’d been ready for it. Except now she struggled to keep the panic from rising in her throat. “But I was born in 1943, not 1942 . . .”
It was a small detail, trivial really. Reading her mother’s letter had rewritten everything she’d ever believed about herself. Learning that her birthday wasn’t even correct shouldn’t have been a surprise, but for some reason, that was what her stubborn mind snagged on.
“I changed your birthday when I forged your birth certificate,” Elizabeth proclaimed, as if forging documents were an everyday occurrence. “You were born in Nashville General Hospital on December 30, 1942, not January 7, 1943. You were born to Mary Tenney, father unknown. I was there the moment you entered this world and gave your first red-faced squall against this unfair life. Then I watched your mother—my best and only friend—hold you. For the first and last time.”
She passed Cat something from inside the file. The certificate was yellowing with age and stamped Bureau of Vital Statistics—Certificate of Live Birth. Listed was all of Mary Tenney’s information, albeit with her occupation listed as beekeeper, which Cat assumed was a sly reference to her real position as a honeytrap. Cat traced her finger over the signature. Her mother’s signature.
Followed by the information about her newborn daughter.
Catherine Louise Tenney. 6 pounds, 8 ounces.
Born December 30, 1942.
Cat thought that was all, until Elizabeth passed her another aging paper.
She read, then reread the words there, struggling to make sense of them.
Office of Vital Statistics—Certified Copy
Certificate of Death
Name: Catherine Louise Tenney
Date of Death: January 1, 1943
Cat didn’t know what elaborate scheme Elizabeth was playing at, but she was sick of the games. “What the hell is this?”
“Well, Catherine, I’m afraid that, at least according to the state of Tennessee, you died two short days after your birth.” She sniffed. “Which also meant that you were dead to the NKVD and any other Russian organization that might have come looking for you during the last twenty years. You were safe.”
Cat’s anger reared its Gorgon head; before she knew it, the gun was out of her purse and pointed at Elizabeth. “Tell me the goddamned truth.”
Elizabeth’s hands lifted, this time as if in surrender. “Just keep that gun pointed at me, Cat, not at yourself. I’ve grown rather fond of you, you know.”
Cat’s growl was guttural. “The truth.”
“I traveled with Mary to Tennessee when she was pregnant, not to help her through an abortion but to hold her hand while she gave birth to you. Mary wanted you, but even more, she wanted you safe from the life she led. It wasn’t difficult to find a sympathetic social worker who was willing to help, for a price. Baby brokering was a booming black market business then—still is—with far more adoptive families than there were babies.”
Every nerve stretched taut as piano wire, Cat motioned with the gun for her to continue. Elizabeth plunged on.
“With the social worker’s help, I forged your death certificate to snuff out any trail to you, just in case the NKVD ever came sniffing. With the very same pen, I wrote out a new birth certificate—the one that was given to your adoptive parents—with a false birthday.”
“Did my mother—did Joan Gray—know? Did Mary know what you did?”
“Suspicions aren’t the same as knowing.” Elizabeth scrabbled for Cat’s hands, but she threw her off, stood so fast her chair knocked over. “I killed three people,” Elizabeth said, a frantic, desperate note to her voice. “But worse, I made a baby disappear and landed my best friend in a mental institution. After my first car accident, Dr. Johnson heard that I was at New York Hospital and sought me out because he’d once heard Mary utter my name amid her disordered ramblings about being a Russian spy. He asked me to visit Mary, and I did, thinking I could take her home with me, but she was too far gone, had tried to kill herself by mixing alcohol with an overdose of phenobarbital. She was unconscious for five days and had been in a severe hallucinatory psychotic state ever since.”
Cat stopped, perfectly motionless. “Where is she now?”
“My Mary?” Something in Elizabeth’s face fractured then. “I should have burned her as a spy the moment she asked f
or my help, saved her from herself. Because I didn’t, she’s dead and gone, I’m afraid.”
And just like that, the rest of Cat’s world dropped out from under her. She’d come here armed with her mother’s letter, thinking to end the woman who had tried to play God—and perhaps even herself—yet, still hoping to find answers. And perhaps to discover that there was still someone to tether her to this life.
Only to have Elizabeth blow the fuse on a cache of dynamite she hadn’t even known existed.
“You should die for what you’ve done.” Cat pointed the gun straight at Elizabeth, one cold finger on the trigger. The ringing in her ears grew louder until it drowned out everything else; the scope of her sight narrowed to Elizabeth’s bloodless face. “A hundred deaths aren’t enough for you.”
Elizabeth merely squared her shoulders. “Trust me, Catherine, I know.”
In one swift movement, Cat aimed, exhaled.
And squeezed the trigger.
* * *
* * *
The shot reverberated down Cat’s arm, and she flinched as white ceiling plaster rained down. At the last moment, she had raised the gun.
Elizabeth lurched forward. “I have more, Catherine.” She didn’t try to grab the gun, but instead clasped Cat’s wrist. “So much more.”
Again, Cat shook her off, began backing toward the door. “I’ve heard enough. If I don’t get out of here, my last bullet will wind up lodged between your eyes.”
This time, she meant it.
But Elizabeth shoved the manila file at her. “Here’s the adoption contract—the Grays were desperate to be your parents, just as Mary Tenney was desperate to protect you. Everything checks out; the contract even stipulated that you keep your name. I’ve included the card for the New Haven FBI office. They’ll confirm everything I’ve said—they’re the ones who helped me track you down three years ago.”
A Most Clever Girl Page 34