Those Harper Women

by Stephen Birmingham

  They had been playing cards one evening, after dinner, and her mother got her headache and said that she was ready to go upstairs. She got up and crossed the room to put the cards in the drawer of the lowboy where they were kept and, as she tugged at the drawer, a lamp on the lowboy fell over and crashed to the floor. It was a kerosene lamp (there was no electricity in St. Thomas in those days) and was unlighted, but Edith ran quickly to pick it up before oil spilled on the rug. The cut-glass globe was broken and lay in pieces on the floor, and Edith picked up the bits of glass and put them in a wastebasket. Then she went upstairs with her mother.

  Late the next morning they were seated again at the card table, and her mother said suddenly, “That girl … that flower girl.”

  “Alicia?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about her, Mama?”

  “She broke a beautiful crystal lamp when she was dusting. It was a treasure of a lamp, it came from Paris. And she had the nerve to stand in front of me and deny it! Oh, they’re impossible, these niggers. And I had all the evidence too—right in the wastebasket where she’d thrown the pieces.”

  “But Mama,” Edith said, astonished, “don’t you remember? You broke that lamp yourself last night when you were putting the cards away.”

  “I did not!”

  “But Mama—you did.”

  She blinked, and her face reddened. “Oh,” she said.

  “Go tell Alicia you’re sorry—hurry.”

  “I’m afraid it’s too late,” she said slowly. “I dismissed her.”

  “How could you do a thing like that, Mama? Even if she had done it, it would have been just an accident. And it was only a lamp!”

  “Well,” she said even more slowly. “I’m afraid there is nothing to be done about it now. She has gone.” She sat there with her cards gripped in her hands, fanning them out, then pressing them together again. Her knuckles were white and her mouth was askew. Two tears squeezed out of her eyes and ran down her cheeks. Suddenly she jumped up. “I’m going to find her!” she said, and she ran through the room and out into the hall, pulled open the front door and ran down the steps into the drive. Edith called after her; one of the other girls could find her, she said. But she wouldn’t stop. She ran down the drive and into the road.

  Edith waited. Her mother was gone for hours, it began to grow dark, and she knew that she would have to send someone out to look for her or else go out herself. Then there were sounds outside the house, and Edith went to the door. Dolly Bruce Harper was coming up the steps and Andreas was supporting her. She leaned on him heavily, and her silk dress was covered with dust and torn at the hems, her hair was unpinned, and her face was dirty and streaked with tears. Andreas said, “I found her like this—running through the streets.”

  Her head lay against Andreas’ shoulder and she moaned, “I can’t … can’t find her. I’ve looked everywhere, but nobody knows her. What’s her name? I can’t remember her name!”

  Edith put her arms around her mother and, together, she and Andreas helped her into the house and up the stairs.

  In the middle of the stairs, Dolly Harper shrieked, “She used to bring me flowers! She was my flower girl! Beautiful flowers!”

  They went on to her room, and Andreas lifted her up onto the bed.

  “Who is this young man?” she asked in a dreamy voice.

  “This is Andreas Larsen, Mama.”

  “Pink roses. And lilies—”

  “I’ll get you a glass of wine, Mama.” She went to the carafe on the dresser.

  Andreas was bending over Dolly Harper’s face, and suddenly he straightened up. “Is that what you give her?” he asked sharply. “Wine?”

  “It helps her sleep,” Edith said, filling a glass.

  He turned quickly, with a sad look on his face, and walked toward the door. “I’ll wait for you outside,” he said.

  When she met him, a few minutes later, in the shadows outside the gate, she said, “I told Mama about us!”

  He held her shoulders. “What did she say?”

  She laughed a little wildly. “Why, she didn’t even seem to care! She just smiled and nodded. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  His face was hidden from her in the shadows, and she couldn’t see his eyes. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s walk a little.”

  “Aren’t you happy, Andreas? Isn’t this a good sign?”

  “I think it means—absolutely nothing,” he said.

  He was right, she knew. They walked in silence for a little way.

  “You have a sunburn, Edith,” her father said. He had arrived home unannounced, late that afternoon. “It is not becoming.” He tweaked her nose playfully. “I don’t want a red-nosed little princess.”

  “Papa—” she began.

  “If you arrive in Europe looking like a lobster you’ll be laughed out of every drawing room in Paris. There is also such a thing as sun poisoning.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “If you have occasion to leave the house, you should wear a hat or carry a parasol.” He continued to hold the tip of her nose pinched between his fingers. “It’s hardly ladylike to be sunburned.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “Yes-Papa-yes-Papa-yes-Papa,” he mimicked. “I have a dutiful little princess, anyway. Now tell me how you got this lobster face.”

  “I’ve been out walking, Papa.”

  “Walking with your mother?”

  “When she’s resting or not feeling well I sometimes walk—”

  “You mean you walk alone? You leave her alone?”

  “Sometimes she doesn’t seem to want me with her, Papa.”

  He pushed her face aside with his hand, and all at once his voice was harsh. “Whether she wants you with her or not, whether she is well or unwell, you are to keep your mother company. Where is she now?”

  “In her room, Papa,” Edith said.

  “He’s home tonight,” she whispered to Andreas when she met him. “But he was cross with me. It’s useless to ask him anything when he’s in a mood like that.”

  He stood very silently in the moonless night, a tall shape. “Edie,” he said at last, “when are you going to believe me? It’s going to be useless to ask him at any time.”

  “Couldn’t I just try?” she begged him. “Then, if he said no—”

  “Asking isn’t going to get you anywhere, you know that. No, there’s only one way to do it.”

  “Without asking,” she said.

  In the darkness, he nodded.

  “But he might say yes!”

  He shook his head. “No,” he said. “Edie—there are so many reasons why I will not be—acceptable to him.”

  “Why won’t you be?”

  He shrugged. “For one thing, my family. Not good enough for Harpers.”

  “But your father is one of the most important men in St. Thomas!”

  “It isn’t a question of importance,” he said. “It’s something else. I have the tarbrush.”

  She had never heard the expression before. “What do you mean, Andreas?”

  “I have black blood. On my mother’s side. She is half black.”

  “Oh!” For a moment her head reeled and she stepped away from him. “That’s not true!” she cried. “It’s a lie! You just mean you don’t want to marry me!”

  “Of course it’s true.”

  “True! How could it be? If it’s true, why didn’t you tell me?”

  He turned his back to her. “Why should I have told you?” he shouted angrily. “Why should I have to apologize to you that I am a quarter Saint Thomian? Why should I have to apologize to anyone—much less you, a Harper! I’m proud of it! I have island blood, and I’m proud. I will not get down on my knees to you and apologize for anything!”

  “Andreas,” she said, “I didn’t mean apologize! But—couldn’t you at least have told me?”

  “Why? Why should I?” Then his voice changed. “This changes everything, doesn’t it, with you?”

  Suddenly she ran t
o him across the dark road. “No,” she said urgently. “It doesn’t change a thing. I don’t care. I’m going to marry you anyway! We’ll run away. Andreas, I don’t care!”

  “It will be the end of your life—the end of everything you’ve known.”

  “I can’t bear my life! I love you.”

  “Promise me that?”

  “I promise you.”

  “We’ll have to run away,” he said in a dead voice. “I’ll have to see if I can get a boat, and some money. Perhaps to Tortola. Go home now and get some sleep. I’ll see that I can do.”

  Early the next morning, her father came into her bedroom. “You’ve been seeing the Larsen boy” were his first words. How he had found out she did not know.

  “No, Papa.”

  He stepped quickly toward the bed where she lay and struck her hard across the mouth. “Don’t lie to me!” he said.

  “Yes, Papa! I have.”

  “Juel Larsen’s son. Did he spoil you? Did he try to give you one of his filthy nigger babies? Did he—”

  What happened after that is now a little jumbled in her memory; the details are blurred for everything that happened after that happened very quickly. She remembers screaming at her father, “No—but we’re getting married, Papa! And you can’t stop us, Papa! Isn’t it wonderful that you can’t stop us, Papa? Because you can’t. Nobody can. Because nothing you say or do can stop us, and isn’t that nice, Papa dear? Isn’t that lovely, Papa dear?” She remembers that the experience of speaking to him like this exhilarated her, and that she went on and on, lying there crouched on her bed, screaming at him, waiting for him to strike her again, begging him, “Hit me, Papa! Hit me again, Papa dear! Because even that won’t stop me! Hit me, Papa.” But he didn’t. He merely stood looking down at her for a moment or two, smiled, turned, and walked out of the room.

  She got out of bed and dressed hurriedly. She scribbled a little note and gave it to one of the maids to deliver to Andreas, telling her to wait for a reply. When the girl came back with the answer, it said simply, “Come to my father’s house after ten tonight. Perhaps he can help us.”

  She remembers that leaving Sans Souci that night was an odd sensation, very odd. Because no one did try to stop her. Her father had been out of the house most of the day and had not come back. She went down the stairs unhindered and unquestioned, feeling lightheaded. The rooms were empty, and she noticed for the first time how large they were—how large without point of purpose for being large. Her father had designed this house himself, an edifice suitable to his proportions and to the scale of his dream. Empty, the rooms seemed like painted friezes—huge backdrops with bits and pieces of gold-painted paper pasted against them to resemble furniture. The rooms were stage settings for dramas that would never take place, in which no human action would ever occur, and with this new vision she saw her father’s dream as his delusion.

  She went down the drive and out into the road. Being free was now almost an anticlimax because none of the scenes she had expected had materialized. She had foreseen restraining hands, imprecations, accusations, entreaties. Instead, she walked quietly along the dark road down Government Hill, and had gone some distance toward the Larsens’ house before she began to realize that something might have happened.

  The Larsens’ butler looked alarmed when he opened the door and saw her. But he let her inside the lighted hallway, and asked her to wait there. Presently, Andreas’ tall and beautiful mother, whom she had never seen before, started down the stairs. Halfway down she stopped. She looked very frightened. “What are you doing here?” she said.

  “Where is Andreas?”

  “Get out of here—please. You can’t come here. Get out—quickly.”

  “What’s happened?” Edith said. “Where is he?”

  “Please!” the woman said. “Get out of here. Just go. Go! You stupid girl, you can’t come here, you’re not wanted here—get out.”

  “Where is he?” Edith repeated. “Just tell me where he is.”

  She remembers the tall woman standing there in a long black dress, gripping the carved banister, screaming for the butler. “Billy! Billy! If this girl won’t go, you’ll have to throw her out! Just get her out of here! I can’t endure it!” she sobbed. She turned and ran back up the stairs, and Edith remembers the butler, Billy, smiling apologetically, bowing, making little pushing, shooing motions with his hands, advancing toward her, saying, “Please … you go now, Miss Edith Harper? Yes. Please, Miss Edith Harper … you go now? Yes?”

  The next morning they had all gone. The Larsens’ house was closed, its shutters drawn and locked. Andreas’ father’s office was also closed. The whole family had vanished. There had been typhus in the household, someone told her, and they had all had to leave the island. But of course this wasn’t true. Somehow, her father had removed them all.

  The family would leave for Europe earlier than usual, her father informed them curtly at a family meeting. They were to be ready to leave for San Juan in two days, and they would sail from there to Cherbourg.

  On the boat Edith sat in a deck chair beside her mother, who looked particularly ill and tired under the steamer rugs. “It was the only way,” she said at last. “Your papa did the right thing. Try to understand.”

  Edith said nothing.

  “He was only after your money—only that.”

  “That isn’t true.”

  “Of course it’s true. It will always be true. You are Meredith Harper’s only daughter.”

  “What do you mean it will always be true?”

  “Edith, I should have told you before. Unless a girl is beautiful—”

  “Which I am not.”

  “Unless a girl has—exceptional endowments, a man does not want to marry a plain girl. If the girl is rich, however, the money will—compensate. Do you understand? This can be both a blessing and a handicap, my dear. The blessing is that you will certainly someday find a nice husband—and not be one of these poor souls who never marry. The handicap is that you are the natural prey of fortune hunters. I didn’t make these rules of human nature. They just exist! No matter what else a man likes about you, the money will always be his first consideration. Once you accept this about yourself, my dear, you can be happy.” She covered Edith’s bare hand with her gloved one. “And remember—time heals all wounds.”

  Edith was out of the deck chair and running to the rail of the ship. Her mother came after her, and for several minutes they struggled there in violent silence, their feet sliding together on the polished deck, making absolutely no sounds until Dolly Harper began to scream, “Steward! Steward! Steward!”

  This is how Edith remembers that April crossing that year, when her nineteenth birthday was just a month away.

  On the beach at Morningstar, Leona sits in the sun, oiled and polished, scanning faces. A blond young man waves to her. “Hiya, Leona baby!”

  “Hi. Have you seen Eddie Winslow?”

  “Nope. He should be along, though.”

  She lies back on her towel, her face upward, arms at her sides, eyelids closed and trembling against the sun’s red glare. It is important, in the sun, to keep one’s face composed and unsquinting because there are such things as wrinkles. And twenty-seven is not young, no matter what anybody says. No, it is darned near middle-age. What is, technically, middle age anyway, she asks herself? Well, if threescore years and ten is the normal human lifespan, then middle age is precisely thirty-five. Thirty-five for her is just seven and a half short years away. They will pass as swiftly as the last seven and a half have—and the last seven and a half have scooted past her on roller skates. Over her. A whole roller derby of days has passed over her, and those hard little wheels have hurt. No use trying to move middle age, as some women did, to forty, and then, with another discreet nudge, to forty-five. It would be on her before she knew it, her life half over. And yet, she thinks, figuring this way means that her grandmother’s life ought to be wholly over which, of course, it isn’t. And so, perhaps.�
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  Someone’s foot jogs her bare toe, and she opens her eyes and looks up. He stands, a foreshortened shadow, over her. “Ah,” she says, sitting up, “I was waiting for you.”

  “Hello.”

  “Come,” she says, spreading out her towel, “sit down.”

  Squatting tailor-fashion on the towel beside her, he gives her a bitter smile.

  “Eddie, I’m sorry about last night. Are you still mad at me?”

  “No,” he says. “I never was, as a matter of fact.” Cupping his hands over his eyes he looks out at the glittering water of the bay.

  She touches his bare knee. “It was all so sudden, as we say.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “I guess it was.”

  “You really should give a girl a little time to gather her wits after you say things like that.”

  “Sure. Sure.”

  Gently, she says, “Eddie—dear Eddie. I am awfully fond of you, you know that.”

  “Sure. You think I’m perfectly swell.”

  “Listen, Eddie, don’t you understand? After my last divorce I promised myself that I simply wouldn’t rush into anything again. Next time, I’ve got to be terribly sure. That’s all.”

  She smiles at him, but his dark, good-looking face is still scowling at the sea. “Just give me a little time, Eddie, to think about all the things you said.”

  He nods.

  “And don’t go running off on me. I had a low blow today about my gallery. It’s going to be more important to me than ever to have a friend with the press.”

  “Sure. I’m always here. Good old reliable Eddie.”

  “Don’t say that!” she says quickly, because these are the words, of course, with which she has always thought of him. “And don’t think that what you said didn’t make me terribly pleased and flattered and—yes, honored, Eddie. Because it did.”

  They sit in silence for several minutes. Then Leona says, “I had a rather quaint evening after you left. Who is this Arch Purdy, anyway?”

  “A smart customer. I did a story on him once. Got to know him pretty well.”

  Leona shakes a cigarette from her pack and lights it. “An odd man, I thought. I’m not sure I liked him much. He was full of questions—all about my marriages, and things like that.”