by Tom Murphy
Then Kate turned from the closet. Her lip was quivering. She was going to cry. Lily smiled and tried to think what to say. It was all too much, too many secrets in one helping.
“Thank you,” said Kate softly, “thank you.” Then she ran to Lily and threw her arms around her, sobbing.
“What is wrong, my darling?”
“I…don’t want to leave them. Don’t want to be different.”
For a moment Lily just held the trembling little creature. This was nothing more than a case of overexcitement. Kate would get over it, and soon. She’d have to.
“You aren’t leaving anyone, my darling. That’s the best part. You’ll have all this, and the Bakers too. Anytime at all—you’ll see. Soon you’ll all be having lessons together, too, won’t that be fun? And you can play here, and have Mary here, or go there, any way you like. It’s only a few feet away, after all, goodness, Katie-Kate, think how I had to sail halfway around the world.”
The sobbing stopped. Kate sniffed, shook her head like a wet dog, and spoke. “It’s a beautiful room, Lily.”
“Can you call me ‘Mother’? For sure that’s what I am, darling.”
“Mother,” said Kate softly. “Mother.”
The angels sang. And now it was Lily fighting tears, all for a word she had feared might never be spoken.
Brooks Chaffee wished the kindly old lady would sink right into the earth, that she’d vanish from the train carriage and never be heard from again. It was bad enough that he was wearing an ill-fitting uniform of the wrong regiment and the wrong rank, bad enough that he didn’t know whether the letters he’d scribbled yesterday would get home before he did, that his leg throbbed as though devils were tearing it apart with hot tongs, that he missed Caroline with every fiber of his brain and body, that he had no words to tell his parents what had really happened to Neddy in the horror of Antietam.
Still, there she was, eighty if a day, spry and smiling, offering him platitudes and home-baked shortbread.
There was such a reservoir of grace and good manners in him that Brooks could not bring himself to be rude to such a person. He simply wished she’d shut up, go away, vanish. But her voice droned on, and her eyes twinkled with unrelenting cheer behind the gold-rimmed spectacles.
“…all our gallant lads, gathered in this noblest of causes, it does my old heart good, Lieutenant, to know that there is such nobility left among us…have some more shortbread, you’re looking peaked, if I do say so…and the glorious victory at Antietam was just one such…”
I’ll kill her. I will simply kill her. No jury in the land would convict me. Of all the people on all the trains north, I had to get this animated recruiting poster. He prayed to whatever gods were left that she’d get off at Philadelphia.
It was not to be. On she went, relentless, all the way to Jersey City. By then, mercifully, Brooks had fallen into a kind of hypnotic doze. What a fool he’d been to travel in uniform. Even that was a farce; he’d be mustered out the minute he showed up at regimental headquarters, that was for sure; the medical papers they’d given him proclaimed his complete inability to walk unassisted by crutches at any time well into the indefinite future.
Yes. He should have taken the time to get some decent civilian clothes. But time was what he had none of; he’d been in the depths of his own private madness too long, and at what cost to his parents and his wife, he knew not.
And all the unanswerable questions clawed at his mind like maddened animals in a trap. If it had to be one of us, why Neddy? Will Caroline love me as a cripple? Will there ever be any kind of sanity in the world, ever again? And the unspeakable fact. It was one of ours. Neddy.
The train’s wheels clicked and rattled northward. Well, at the very least he’d be home, surrounded by quiet and comfort and love, home to lick his wounds, home where his attention could be diverted by Caroline, by the bank, by old friends and familiar sights and tried values. They don’t shoot you from behind on West Eleventh Street.
Surely he’d get straightened out at home. Surely now if he woke up sweating ice water from the nightmare, at least Caroline would be there to comfort him.
It was late afternoon when they pulled in to Jersey City. The dreadful old lady took his hand when they parted.
“Dear gallant boy, I feel I’ve known you all my life. Keep up the good work, Lieutenant, it’s boys like you who make the Union what it is.”
“Good-bye, Mrs. Briggs.”
If it’s boys like me who make the Union what it is, Mrs. Briggs, then God help the Union. And for the first time on the long and painful journey north, Brooks smiled.
Sophie Delage came out to the ranch just before Christmas, trailing laughter and presents, and looking happier than Lily remembered. Lily heard the carriage and ran to the front door, flung it open, and embraced her old friend. “Dear Sophie! How good of you to come all this way.”
Sophie beamed. “I wouldn’t have missed it for anything, my dear. Come. Let me look at you. Why, Lily, you are brown as a wild Indian. You’ll never catch a husband that way.”
Lily smiled and took Sophie by the hand, leading her into the library. Soon they were settled by the fire and Gloria brought tea. And only then did Lily reply.
“Sophie, dear, if the only men I ever see again are Fred Baker’s farm workers, it may be just as well.”
Sophie looked at her hostess. Brown she might be, but there was definitely a glow to the girl. Farm life obviously agreed with her.
“Are you bitter, then? You don’t think I lured you into a life of wickedness?”
Lily’s laughter was an answer in itself. “Dear Sophie. Once, for sure you saved my life, and probably twice, and Katie’s too, by taking me in. If there’s any blame, it falls on me, and when St. Peter asks me, should I get that chance, that is exactly what I’ll say.”
“Just seeing you look so well makes me feel better, dear. To have all this…” Sophie gestured at the handsome room, its bookshelves only a quarter filled as yet, and mostly with farming journals. “You truly have made a life for yourself, just as you planned. Tell me. How’s the baby?”
“Not such a baby. Kate’s six, and she’s with me now, and she knows the story, more or less.”
Sophie sipped her tea, nibbled a lace cookie, leaned back in her chair and sighed. It seemed to Lily that there was a world of regret in that sigh, and this made Lily feel in one quick rush of happiness how lucky she had been to escape the bawdy life after only six years of it, and with her health intact, and a good nest egg.
“I have come,” said Sophie with a portentous air, “to tell you some news.”
“Oh, tell me! All the news we get out here is how the crops are sprouting and is the henhouse finished yet.”
“Well. I am following your good example, Lily. I have sold the El Dorado. I’ll be sailing for New York in two weeks, and when next you see me I shall be Mrs. Sophie Pritchard, The Elms, White Plains, New York, and a most respectable widow. Actually, that is my real name.”
Lily looked at her friend, amazed. Suddenly it occurred to Lily how much there was about Sophie that she didn’t know and had never asked. Impulsively, Lily jumped up and ran to Sophie and kissed her.
“I’m very happy for you, Sophie, and I know you will be happy, too, in your new life.”
“I never thought I’d do it. Truly, it was your good example that set me off.” Sophie dropped her bright eyes to the tea table. “You are everything I could have been, Lily, here, on this fine ranch, with your child. But I was too greedy. I waited too long, and suddenly my youth was gone, and with it all the chance I ever had of real happiness.”
“But surely you’ve had friends…had fun?”
Sophie hesitated before she replied, and when she spoke, her voice was so low, she might have been speaking only to herself. “The only friend I ever made in this business is you, Lily, and your scorn for the business showed me my life for what it is, and, worse, for what it might have been.”
“My scorn was ne
ver for you, dear Sophie.”
“But you, Lily, you could be anything…still can be. You could be a queen.”
“Ill be happy if our squash vines grow well, and if Kate blooms strong and fair.”
“You know yourself better than ever I did at your age, my dear. But don’t be too harsh on the world just because you had a bit of bad luck. The right man might still come along.”
“Get on with you! Sure, and he’d have to be far off the path to find me here, and you can bet I’ll not go hunting. I’m through with all that Sophie—I guess we both are. I’ll take tea over champagne anytime, and a day riding in my hills to all the balls and parties that ever were.”
“The saddest thing in all the world, Lily, is a door shut tight, for who can ever know what great joys are locked out forever on the other side?”
“Or what great sorrows.”
“Maybe they go hand in hand. Well, perhaps that is enough of philosophy for the moment. I really came to say good-bye, and to tell you, Lily dear, that you will live forever in my heart, even if I’m on one side of this big country and you on the other.”
They both stood, and again Lily embraced her friend. They kissed warmly, and promised to write often.
“I won’t forget you, either, Mrs. Sophie Pritchard, The Elms, White Plains, New York!”
“My dear farm lady! Remember my words, Lily, and don’t lock yourself away from the world. You aren’t a nun, you know.”
“That fact,” said Lily with a laugh, “has come to my attention. Bon voyage, Sophie, and I thank you for everything.”
“Good-bye, my darling.”
As she watched Sophie’s carriage disappearing down the long driveway, Lily thought: There goes my last real connection with the old life, but for Fergy, but for Stanford, and the Lord knows it’s little enough of those two I’m seeing these days. Then she heard Katie’s voice, laughing at play with little Mary Baker, and went to invite them in for milk and cookies.
Brooks drew the oversized military coat tight around him as he stood on the deck of the ferry. It was a cold gray day in early December, but still he stayed on deck. The ferry’s progress was so smooth and so slow that the skyline of New York seemed to be moving toward them, an army of steeples and row houses; shops, factories, and water towers; and trees. New York at last!
He surveyed the place where he’d been born and lived nearly all of his life. If anyone had asked him, even now, how he felt about New York, Brooks would have readily sworn he loved it. But now the sight of these familiar streets and spires, the bustling wharves, even the smells and sounds of home were reaching him, but with a disconcerting difference. He felt, even as he swung himself down the gangplank on his borrowed hospital crutches, a sense of detachment, as though none of this were real. It was like looking at pictures in a stranger’s album.
He hailed a cab and gave the address on West Eleventh Street.
Oh, there might be those who’d say he owed it to his parents to go first to them. But they’d waited this long, and he was uncomfortable in the borrowed uniform—a dead man’s uniform, he was sure, for there had been no mention of his giving it back—and he had closets filled with good clothes. And Caroline! All the excuses he might make up led straight and simply to the real reason he urged the cab on faster. Just to see her again would be a balm to him. To hold her, to love her, to be bathed in her warmth and all the sweet reciprocities of loving: that was what Brooks wanted, perhaps more than life itself. And all the rest of it could wait, the tragedy and the telling of it, the bottomless horror of his own doubts and fears.
It hadn’t changed at all, but for the leaves being gone from the trees. They had just been about to turn when he’d left this dear street, this lovely house. Three months?
It hadn’t changed. Here were the brownstone stairs, here the acanthus leaves wrought forever in the iron of the rail, there the brass oval gleaming with the scrolled number plate, the doorframe all chastely white, twin columns framing twin strips of glass, the door itself deep green, in fine contrast to the warm brick, lights gleaming from within. Home!
She might not be there.
She had no reason to be, unless his letter had arrived, which it well might not have done, mails being what they were in these confusing times. He paid off the cab and swung himself down on his good right leg. The left leg was so painful now that it had moved almost beyond pain. It seemed like a permanent hereditary curse burning into his brain. He fitted the wooden crutches under his arms and lurched across the sidewalk. I must look like the devil. They’ll think I’m one of the begging wounded. Well, in a way, I am.
He had no key. As he reached for the polished brass lion’s head with the steel ring in its mouth, Brooks wondered where all those things were now: the locket of Caroline, painted on ivory, charming but not a patch on the original, his wedding ring, keys, letters, all the fine uniforms in the best British broadcloth. Neddy’s things too—who had them? Maybe they, at the least, had been salvaged; you wouldn’t expect looting in a headquarters company. But then you wouldn’t expect any of it, not the looting, nor the confusion, nor the horror. He knocked and heard it echo in the empty hall.
It was a quiet time on West Eleventh Street, just before sundown. Here and there a gas lamp flickered in the gathering dusk. Lights were on in his house, too, and surely even if Caroline wasn’t at home there must be a servant. Was that the sound of someone laughing? It was vague, if he had truly heard it at all, and it might as well have come from across the street, or another house. How long it had been since he had heard a carefree laugh, or even imagined one, if that was what he was doing at this moment. Again he reached for the lion’s head. It was damned cold on these steps. If no one came this time, he’d go to his parents’ after all. The thought of doing that chilled him even more than the brisk December wind.
The door opened a few inches. A woman he’d never seen before stood there in a disheveled maid’s uniform, greasy apron, a lock of her mouse-brown hair tumbling neglected over her forehead.
“Whacherwant?”
There were so many answers to this that for a moment Brooks stood at the door gaping. He really must speak to Caroline about having so slatternly and ill-spoken a servant, in any capacity. His mother would probably faint, greeted by such a mannerless hussy. She stared at him with the fixed intensity known only to madmen and the very stupid.
“I want to come in. I live here, my woman. I am Brooks Chaffee.”
Her reaction to this was as unexpected as the woman herself: she screamed at the top of her lungs and tried to slam the door in his face. But Brooks had seen it coming, and wedged one of his crutches into the small gap, and leaned on the door with all his weight. The girl retreated, still screaming, as the master of the house came tumbling into his own front hallway. Brooks was enraged, but not so thoroughly that he couldn’t see the comedy of it. How he and Caroline would laugh, later on, when all was known! For the moment, he hoped none of his conservative neighbors had witnessed the undignified scene.
Brooks righted himself and slid out of his coat. The servant had vanished into the depths of the house, undoubtedly to arm herself or bring reinforcements.
A door opened upstairs. There was laughter; then the door slammed. A man’s laughter. Footsteps, seeming to stumble, on the stairs.
“Caroline?”
Her voice was slurred. “Whoever you are, I am not receivin’.”
“Caroline, it’s me. Brooks.”
“That, sir, is not funny. Not funny at all.”
He hobbled to the stairs and began pulling himself up. It was more work than he expected. Brooks heard the sound of his own heavy breathing fill the stairwell, punctuated by the thumping, bumping of his awkward crutches. She heard it too.
“Don’t you come any further, hear?” There was something strange in the voice he loved so well. Brooks kept on climbing.
“If this is another one of your jokes, Jack Wallingford, it is in very poor taste.”
“Carolin
e. It is me.”
“I will scream. I will get the police.”
Women who say they’ll scream never do it. Where had he heard that? From old Jack himself, most likely.
“I warn you, I am not alone.”
He pulled at the handrail and pushed with his crutch. The bedroom door slammed, a lock clicked. There. The landing. He paused, got his breath. Their bedroom was only halfway down the hall. The well-remembered blue carpet stretched in front of him, beckoning, a mine field. Slowly, painfully, propelled by crutches and willpower and the power of all the love for her he’d been storing up these several months, Brooks swung his way down the hallway. Where were the old servants? What was this mad laughter in the afternoon? Was this really his house after all? The sinking feeling in his gut struggled with the burning desperation of his love, of all the hope that was left in him, and the fragrant memory of last year’s dreams.
Like a demented crab, Brooks pulled himself to her door, knocked, and knocked again. The sound of it seemed to rattle the big house to its foundations.
Then came that laughter. A man’s laughter. A sound like scuffling. And Caroline’s voice, slurred, drunken, mocking. “Do go away. You—all are intrudin’ upon the grief of a poor war widow lady.”
And the man in there laughed.
Brooks looked at his bedroom door, gateway to the dearest pleasures he had ever known or ever wanted to know. His brain went mercifully numb then, or he might have found a gun and shot them both, or burned the place down. They don’t shoot you in the back on West Eleventh Street!
He lifted his crutch, feeling the weight of it. Good solid maple, by the look of the thing. He wondered if it would serve to break the door down. He wondered if seeing her would finally drive him over the edge of sanity. He looked at the door, at the fine-edged moldings and gleaming hardware of it, at its immaculate white paint.
He didn’t want to see what was behind that door, or hear it explained. He’d heard too much already.