Goosebumps rippled along Nelle’s arms, beneath her silk dress and wool shawl. She pictured Miss Pettit collapsed in some cold room, the death rattle overtaking her. Before the evening dusk the sun might come out for a while, shining on the bare floor of Miss Pettit’s room, making stripes of light across skewed limbs.
Around Nelle, the lobby emptied. The ticket-seller and concessionaire pulled shutters across their windows. No sign of Victor. She went back into the theater. Bright lights were on, and attendants pushed brooms between rows. “Did you lose something, Miss?” a man called.
“No,” she said. She climbed the steps to the stage and ducked beneath the curtain.
“You can’t go up there,” the man said.
Nelle ignored him and hurried into the wings. She passed through a high-ceilinged chamber containing props from the show. A scarred piano occupied a corner, the ivories curling from the wooden keys like unkempt fingernails. It was a sin to abuse a piano. Her mother’s tuner would have sighed about this one, using plaintive Italian words.
She reached a dark hallway and called, “Victor? Are you here?”
In the silence she heard noises from the street: carriage wheels, voices. She turned around but found only more darkness.
“Victor?” she called. “It’s me, Nelle.”
Suddenly her arms were deep in a welter of cloth, of hanging garments. She must have walked into a closet. Then she was pushed from behind, shoved into the compartment. She tripped—yes, it was an armoire. There was the bottom. She cried out, but the clothing muffled the sound. She felt textures of satin and brocade, taffeta and lace, but the door banged against her shoulder blades. A key scraped in the lock. She turned and pressed against the door, but it was like pushing on stone.
“Help!” she called. She listened for Victor’s laugh, but there was nothing except her own heartbeat. “Victor, I know it’s you. Let me out.”
Silence. She could suffocate. Hadn’t Victor locked her in a closet when she was a child? He was caned for that. He had a mean streak, inherited, Nelle believed, from their mother, whose good manners concealed a bitter heart.
By shoving the clothes apart, she had space enough to stand. The garments gave off the scents of sweat and skin. The perfume and talc the actresses used were cheap.
The men sweeping the theater aisles saw her go backstage. They would remember her if someone happened to ask about her, but they wouldn’t know she was trapped. Of course, one of them might be the attacker. She beat against the wardrobe’s walls and ceiling. The air felt scant and hot. She vowed she would never again place an animal in a cage. She needed to use a toilet.
Abruptly the wardrobe lurched. Evidently its screeching casters scarred the floor; she heard metal gouging wood. She tried leaning the other way, to balance the weight, but the armoire toppled and crashed.
She found herself on her back. She kicked at the door, which flew open at last. Her necklace caught on something and broke, so that she erupted into the light with a spray of pearls. She groped for a hand-hold as she climbed out, her knees weak. Why were her stockings wet? Oh: she had peed.
She grasped a hanger, ready to defend herself. The room was gaslit and contained an unmade cot, a dresser, and a chair. A moan reached her, and she checked beneath the armoire. An arm stuck out. Was the person dead?
Laughter rang out behind her, and she spun to find three people in the doorway: Victor, Abigail Barnaby, and a little boy. Victor clapped his hands as if applauding. Then he raised the armoire. Out crawled a dazed-looking roughneck with a stubbly beard. He sat up and scratched his belly.
“Nelle, I’m proud of you. It was a hard joke,” Victor said. “Meet my friends—Abigail Barnaby, her brother Frank, and her husband Julius, who has lived to tell the tale. My resourceful sister, Nelle Scott.”
Abigail Barnaby blinked, including Nelle in a snag of her smile. The boy, Frank, looked sickly, yet his face held a sweetness that registered on Nelle even in her gathering fury.
Victor said, “You’re not hurt, are you?”
The concern on his face disgusted her. He was only afraid for himself. He had shown off for these people, and now by her silence she was making him look like a fool. Even as a child, he had loved provoking her, teasing her into tantrums. She had figured out how to get even, by ignoring him. That was the only thing he couldn’t stand.
“Your hair’s come undone,” he said.
“It’s charming,” said Abigail Barnaby, her voice a chime.
Victor reached out as if to lift Nelle’s hair from her shoulders. His eyes were on her lips, as if he wanted to kiss her. How much she hated him, to even have that thought.
She took a deep breath and stepped past all of them. Her feet crunched on the pearls from her ruined necklace. She decided never to speak to Victor again. She hurried through the warren of backstage rooms. A door was propped open with a chair, and she saw an alley. Night had fallen, and chilly spring air swirled in, smelling of horse manure, streetcar fumes, mist. A carriage clattered by. Streetlamps cast a garish brilliance outside. She realized she had lost her shoes. Her bag, too. Yet she still had on her warm shawl, and in her pockets were her gloves. She drew them onto her fingers.
Behind her came the sound of running feet, and a high voice. “Miss, oh miss.” The boy, Abigail’s brother, appeared. “You forgot these,” and he shoved a pair of shoes into her hands.
She’d never seen them before, but they were lovely: elegant leather pumps with satin bows. “These aren’t mine,” she said.
The child looked crestfallen. He sank into the chair that propped the door.
Nelle slipped one of the shoes on her foot. It fit. The other one, then. She wished the boy had brought her purse, but she would not go back for it. She would hire a carriage to take her home, all the way out to Devon. She was too upset to take the train. Once she reached her house, her father would pay the carriage driver. She could have Victor and the others thrown in jail, though her mother would wail about disgrace.
“I tried to stop them,” the child said. “I told them not to.”
She looked at him. A waif. “How old are you?”
“Nine,” he said. His nose was running.
“Do you have a handkerchief?”
“No.” He wiped his nose on his sleeve, then dug into his pockets and said, “I got as many of your beads as I could.” He opened his palms, and there were about two dozen pearls.
She held out a gloved hand, and he poured them into it. She imagined Victor and those wretches gathering the other pearls, to sell. Well, Victor might need the money, given that their father could disinherit him for this. She slipped the pearls into her pocket.
The boy said, “They wanted me to be in there first. They told me to be quiet and then reach out and touch you. I wouldn’t.”
Nelle regarded him. Was this child, even now, part of a prank? He wasn’t. His red nose and miserable face told her so. She could take him home with her, and her mother would keep him as a project, a pathetic little soul to feed and save.
Footsteps approached, and she heard Victor calling, “Nelle? Nelle, where are you?”
The boy said, “Quick, come on.”
He darted into the alley, and she followed him to a bright, busy corner. The child stepped into the avenue and hailed a carriage. The driver helped Nelle up into the seat, and she couldn’t see the boy anymore.
Later that year, Nelle’s family, including the reluctant Victor, traveled to South America. Nelle knew her parents hoped Victor would forget his infatuation with the actress, but he didn’t. He spent his time writing letters and sending telegrams. Nelle avoided him during the trip. Something about his obsession frightened her.
She is sixty-seven, which means Victor lived to seventy-one, and Charlie is sixty-three.
There is this world, and then the other. The thought strikes her as she searches for Charlie on the train platform. There he is. When he hugs her, she’s surprised by how strong he is.
“Lies
l’s at her office,” Charlie says, meaning his wife, much younger than he, a German-born woman who sells real estate. Nelle has met her only once, when Charlie and Liesl came to Virginia after their wedding, and didn’t much like her. How could anyone marry a German, after those awful wars? “So we’re on our own for lunch,” says Charlie.
He finds a café, and they order. Nelle’s muscles are tired from the train ride and from her fall; was it only yesterday? How lucky that her ankle is only slightly sore.
“Will anyone come to the funeral?” she asks and dips a spoon into her oyster stew.
“A few people, I expect,” Charlie says. “There’s a notice in the paper today. He and that woman had a singular friendship. And her husband. I never figured it out.”
“Oh, he wasted his life,” Nelle says. “He wanted to live perversely.”
Even now Nelle imagines her mother saying, “Lower your voice,” and she glances around to see if anyone is listening.
Why now does she think of Miss Pettit, the chaperone she ordered out of the theater for coughing? How humbly the woman obeyed. Nelle tries to remember if Miss Pettit recovered. If still alive, she must be very old. Phoebe Pettit, that was her name.
She hasn’t shed one tear for Victor. She is thinking of everything except him.
“Would you like dessert?” Charlie asks, and Nelle shakes her head.
Charlie asks the waiter for the check and pays it. Nelle sips her coffee.
Charlie says, “I picked out a casket already. He’s at the mortuary.”
Those steel-cold eyes Victor had, that sharp nose, lips twisted in contempt, the ropy muscles of his arms. Nelle shivers.
Charlie helps her from her chair. “Liesl’s looking forward to your visit,” he says. “You’ll see our new house.”
“Yes,” she says, dreading the effort of being a guest, of having to exclaim and praise. The house is in a suburb.
“We’ve got a situation in our neighborhood,” Charlie says. “All these blackbirds are roosting in our backyard, up in the trees every evening. They’re an awful nuisance.”
“Get some cats,” Nelle says. She has lived in the country for so long, she can hardly imagine birds being a problem. Was it only yesterday she saw the crows?
“We can’t use our patio anymore,” says Charlie. “The birds have ruined our barbecue grill. We’ve tried smoke and lights. I shot a few, but they keep coming back.”
Patios, barbecue grills, suburbs. All these modern things seem trivial. They step outside.
“Liesl thinks she has an answer,” Charlie says as they reach his car. “She’s found a man who claims he can get rid of the birds.”
He opens the door of his Buick and seats Nelle. While they wait for traffic to clear, she considers asking him to drive out to their old house, which is now an equestrian center, but the thought makes her sad. She was often at odds with her family, with all of them, in fact, except Charlie and Russell.
“I want to see where Victor and that woman lived,” she says.
“All right.”
Society Hill is much as she remembers, though now in decline: cobblestoned streets, narrow houses pressing in on each other. Charlie drives slowly. Children play with a scruffy dog. Why aren’t they in school? The sidewalk buckles where a tree has uprooted it.
“Is that the theater?” says Nelle. Now the building is a pawnshop. “What about his will?” she asks, not caring how blunt she sounds.
“I have a copy,” Charlie says. “Half goes to Abigail, a little to you and me, and the rest to the church. Abigail gets his house. There it is.”
The house presents a spare yet sophisticated aspect: old brick with black shutters at the windows. No sign of Abigail Barnaby.
“Victor looked up the deeds and records,” Charlie says. “There used to be a livery stable here. He was always finding horseshoes. He said they reminded him of you.”
“Richard always liked him,” Nelle says.
“Richard was a good man,” Charlie says. “Fifty years Victor was with that woman, yet she would never marry him, would never divorce that drunk. He plays music on the street for money and lives in a shed behind the house.”
“He’ll move in now,” Nelle says, angry at the thought.
“Probably, but it’s none of our business.”
“I went hunting yesterday,” Nelle says, “after you called. I saw no reason not to.”
“None at all,” says Charlie. His face in profile shows no sarcasm. They leave Victor’s neighborhood behind.
“Are those women still there, the whores in that little town near you—Orange?” Liesl asks at dinner, leaning forward, elbows on the table in the European way.
Liesl is more annoying than Nelle remembered, though the sauerbraten she served was surprisingly tasty. Charlie looks embarrassed.
“All those women on a porch, painting their nails,” Liesl says, splaying her fingers. “You could see their laundry hanging around back. It was obvious, what they were.”
Nelle knows the house Liesl means. Not the one where the girl went crazy years ago—Nelle rents it out to a barber. Another bawdy house opened up, in another neighborhood. She never actually saw her boys there; she just knew from the furtive way the older, wilder ones looked after a visit to town, and from conversations she overheard—Richard’s voice scolding, the boys’ subdued.
Nelle says to Liesl, “You’re talking about them, when you could be asking me about friends of mine whom you met.” Nelle is rewarded when Liesl ducks her head. Liesl’s jaw looks mushy: the change of life? She could be a hard companion for Charlie in his old age.
In silence Liesl clears the table. Nelle hears a mild ruckus begin outside, and she recalls Charlie’s talk of pesky blackbirds. Liesl retreats to the kitchen.
Charlie says, “Every year, Victor was more on fire about that woman.” He lowers his voice. “What would it be like to love someone that much? Have you, Nelle?”
“Yes.”
Charlie nods. He must think she means Richard, but she is thinking of other men, of one in particular. She is just like Victor, selfish about love, causing trouble and unhappiness for others. She can admit that, now that she is old, now that she has gained as much experience of passion as Abigail Barnaby must have had long ago.
“What happened to Abigail’s little brother?” she asks. “I remember him. Frank.”
“I believe he died years ago.”
Oh, this is too hard, nothing but death and rumored death.
“Victor didn’t waste his life, Nelle,” Charlie says. “He was a very successful banker. People didn’t know he lived with a married woman. All they knew was that he didn’t accept invitations, didn’t go out very much. When did you last see him?”
“Ten years ago, at Papa’s funeral.” Papa—it just came out. Not Father, as she has trained herself to say. I went, but I never forgave him, she thinks but doesn’t say.
The doorbell rings, a two-note chime, and Nelle is reminded of the newness of this house. Beneath the odors of cooking, it smells of the fiber and glue in the wall-to-wall carpet.
“I’ll get it,” Liesl calls from the kitchen. Nelle hears her greet someone, while the chorus of birds grows louder. “Come meet my husband and my sister-in-law,” Liesl says, leading a man into the dining room.
The man, a fireplug in rumpled clothes, reminds Nelle of Abigail Barnaby’s husband. In his hands is a large wooden box.
“So you think you can solve our bird problem?” Charlie asks.
“Guaranteed,” the man says.
“What’s in the box?” asks Charlie.
Liesl speaks up. “I asked him already. It’s his secret.”
“A hawk,” Nelle says. “Isn’t it?”
The man’s eyes meet hers. “Don’t watch,” he says. “It won’t work if people watch.”
The telephone rings, and Charlie rises from the table to answer it while Liesl ushers the stranger outside.
“It’s for you, Nelle,” Charlie says. “It�
��s Dudley.”
She takes the receiver. The telephone is on a table in the front hallway, which still holds the cold air from outside. Liesl stands in the yard talking with the man, who clutches the box to his chest. Liesl’s posture shows she is cold. Her hands are tucked beneath her armpits. She has more to say to this man than she did to Charlie or Nelle.
Dudley’s voice is cheerful, deep, with the Orange County accent all her boys have. “Mother?” he says. “I wanted to make sure you got up there all right.”
“I had a nice trip,” Nelle says. “We’ve just finished dinner.” She detects some kind of background hilarity. “Dudley, what is that noise?”
“Aunt Iris’s party,” he says.
Nelle had forgotten about the bridal shower.
“They’re playing the funniest game. I’m the referee,” Dudley says, and Nelle is irked that he sounds so gleeful, her son and those flighty old biddies. “It’s called Scrambled Trousseau. There’s two teams, and two suitcases of old clothes. You have to put everything on that’s in the suitcase, then take everything off, and the next person does the same thing. The team that finishes first wins.”
“Are they stripping naked?” Nelle asks, alarmed.
Dudley laughs. “No, you put the old clothes on over your own.” His words slur a little, and she guesses he’s drinking more than fruit punch. “It’s snowing,” he adds.
The next morning Charlie drives Nelle and Liesl out to the Episcopal church in Devon where the Scott family worshiped when Nelle and Charlie were children.
“So many cars,” Nelle says, startled.
“Will I have to host a reception afterward?” Liesl asks in panicked tones. “Charlie, I can’t have all these people over. I didn’t even think of it.”
“You won’t have to,” Charlie says as he parks the car.
Inside, they make their way to the front pew. An organist plays hymns. A closed casket, topped with sprays of flowers, rests before the altar. The minister speaks of Victor Scott, supporter of church and charities. Nelle recalls the wardrobe incident and its aftermath. She did not speak to Victor for five weeks, a heady time that gave her great pleasure. No matter how Victor entreated or raged, she behaved as if he didn’t exist. One day she ceased her war on him, asking him to pass the rolls and butter. She knew she had won.
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