The House on Primrose Pond

by Yona Zeldis McDonough

  With the dining room tidied, Alice went back into the study, where she kept leather-bound albums of photographs; the photos she kept displayed throughout the house were only a small fraction of her collection. They were organized according to year, so it was easy enough to find what she was looking for. She had told Susannah that she had a photo of her mother, but she had not gotten around to finding it. Now it was imperative that she did. She flipped through one of the albums from the mid-1970s, and then another.

  It was in 1976 that she found the photograph she’d remembered. It was one of several taken at their annual Fourth of July party, and since that was the bicentennial year, the party was even more crowded—and memorable—than usual, the house and lawn overflowing with their friends, family, neighbors, and patients. There had been three cakes decorated with blueberries, strawberries, and Cool Whip to look like flags—here was the photograph that documented them—and in many of the photos she could see the dazzle of the sparklers Dave had bought and freely handed out.

  But there were no sparklers in the photograph of Claire Gilmore; she was dazzling enough without them. The camera caught her with a drink in hand, pressed close to her chest. Black curls massed from her head, and her dress, with its pale blue flowers, revealed the lines of a slender, youthful body. She was looking at someone with great interest and great animation; that someone, as Alice recalled, had been Dave. She knew because she’d taken the photograph; she’d borrowed the camera that night and had gaily wandered through the party, snapping as she went.

  Taking the photograph from its sleeve, Alice walked into the kitchen and then through a door in the kitchen that she rarely used anymore. The original house was built in the late eighteenth century and there had been two additions over the years; one of these, right off the kitchen, had been used for Dave’s office.

  Alice turned on the light. Years ago she’d donated any usable medical equipment to a local clinic, but everything else she’d left pretty much intact. Here was the small waiting room where she’d hung reproductions of Norman Rockwell prints featuring children on the walls and set up a wooden dollhouse in the corner; there was the reception desk with its glass jar of lollipops. Beyond the waiting area were two small examination rooms and Dave’s office. It was toward that room that she walked now.

  Dave’s desk, an antique she’d found at auction, was still here, along with the blotter and the banker’s lamp with the green glass shade that came from her own parents’ house. Behind the desk stood his oak rolling chair. She slid it out and sat down.

  On the floor beside the desk was a shredder, an incongruent element in this room but one Dave had deemed necessary. After he’d received the diagnosis of the illness that would kill him but before he fully succumbed to it, he’d systematically gone through his files and shredded almost everything. It was only later, after he’d died, that she’d found a stray folder wedged in the back of a deep drawer in the desk, a folder whose contents she’d examined, puzzled over, and then returned to the top desk drawer. It was still there and she pulled it out now.

  There was only a single sheet of paper inside, on which was written these lines:

  The pale blue flowers on your dress

  So small, so shy

  Did they say yes?

  I heard your voice

  I watched you dance

  I made you mine with just a glance

  Though I would never dare to press

  Still I hoped you would say yes.

  Your lilting laugh

  Your sidelong glance

  I held you when you came to prance.

  We spun and twirled; no more, no less

  And yet it seemed you might say yes.

  Your ink black curls cascading down

  Your doelike eyes, so warm, so brown

  Your easy smile, so wide and free

  All these, did they say yes to me?

  There was no signature, and nothing identifying other than a dropped letter—the h—that she recognized as the defective key on the typewriter belonging to her husband. Could he have written this? She’d never known him to read poetry, much less write it. Still, he could have typed it. But why? She had not known—or wanted to know—the answer then. But she understood it now. She set the photograph next to the poem—it was all here: the dress, the hair. Dave had written it and Claire Gilmore had been its subject.

  Alice sat staring at the poem and the photograph for a long time. Then she got up, turned off the lights, and went back to the liquor cabinet. “You think it’s all right if I have another,” she said to the dog. “You understand, don’t you?”

  As she poured the vodka into the glass, she thought of Dave’s final night on earth. The morphine drip had eased the pain but made him ramble; his mind reeled and wandered all over the place. Le chat noir, he’d kept saying. Le chat noir. At the time, Alice had thought these were random words, plucked from the rudiments of French he knew; he’d always admired—and envied—her fluency in the language. But now she understood that those words had been anything but random; they were specific and intentional, his last, vain attempt to remember—and commune with—a woman he had loved. A woman who was not Alice.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Calista was gone before Susannah was even out of bed; she must have left the house in the dark. There was a text message—At Alice’s—and nothing else. But since she was up so early, Susannah had time to make Jack scrambled eggs with cheese and an English muffin for breakfast.

  “Why aren’t you having anything, Mom?” He spread jam on his muffin.

  “I’m not very hungry,” she said, looking down at her cup. The coffee was black, not her usual milky infusion, but she needed it. “I’ll eat later.”

  “You’re upset about Calista.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “She was here last night. Now she’s gone.” He swallowed a bite of the muffin and followed it with a swig of orange juice. “Is she ever coming back, Mom?”

  This was exactly what Susannah had been wondering. “Do you want her to?”

  Jack seemed to consider the question seriously. “Yes, but only if she could be the way she used to be. She’s so mean to me, Mom. I think she hates me or something.”

  No, she hates me, Susannah wanted to say. “She’s just so angry now. So angry about so many things.”

  “She said you were saying bad stuff about Grandma. Not that I really remember her, but still. Cally does. And that whatever you said got Alice really upset.”

  Susannah heard the school bus wheezing up the hill. “You’d better go,” she said, “or you’ll miss the bus. We can talk about this later.” When Jack had gone, Susannah looked at the breakfast dishes and decided to leave them. She was roiled, she was churning, and she had a sudden urge to talk to Corbin. Apart from that one lapse, she had always found him to be so steady. So accepting and free of all judgment. But she couldn’t call him—she’d put an end to that. Better to distract herself with work.

  She made herself a second cup of coffee—a mistake, but, oh, how she craved it—which she brought upstairs. Just as she sat down and flipped open the laptop, the phone rang. “I haven’t heard a peep from you in ages.” Susannah recognized Tasha’s British accent as well as her habit of dispensing entirely with greetings; she always dove into any conversation headfirst.

  “I’ve just been very busy getting settled and all.”

  “I know, I know. But I wanted to check in just the same. See how it’s going.”

  “By ‘it’ you mean the writing?”

  “Well, yes. Are you still working on that New England lady?”

  “She’s not exactly a lady in the strict sense,” Susannah said. “But yes, I am.”

  “And?”

  “I think it’s going pretty well,” Susannah said. “I think. You’ll have to be the judge of that.”

  “Why
do you think you’re so drawn to this? It’s a real departure for you. What’s the hook?”

  “I’m not entirely sure,” she said. “But I know I’m fascinated by the issue of guilt—what Betsey Pettingill did, and the unintended consequences it had. I just can’t stop thinking about that—how a random, entirely forgettable act could have such an effect. On Ruth Blay, of course. But on Betsey too.”

  “Are you telling Betsey’s story? Or Ruth’s?” asked Tasha.

  “Both.” And in that moment Susannah realized it was true. “The two stories are so intertwined; one shapes and directs the other. Of course there’s not a lot known about Betsey’s story, so I’m going to have to invent parts of it. I’ll stick as close to the facts as I can, though.”

  Tasha was uncharacteristically quiet. “All right, then. You keep at it. I’ve got Kitty Redden doing Jane Seymour and I think she’s going to work out. When do you think you can get me another batch of pages? I’m going to need more in order to make up my mind.”

  “April. Or early May at the latest.”

  “Brilliant,” said Tasha. “I’ll look forward to seeing them. And if you have any questions, anything you want to hammer out over the phone, you know you can call me, Susie. Anytime.”

  “Thanks, Tasha. I appreciate that.” The only other person who ever called her Susie had been Charlie. She said good-bye and hung up the phone.

  Susannah looked at the clock in the corner of her computer screen; it was almost ten o’clock and she’d been up since six. That second cup of coffee—black and even stronger than the first—was making her jumpy. She’d better have something now before she started feeling light-headed. But before she went back down to the kitchen, she did a quick check of her e-mail and found a message from Lynda Jacobsmeyer.

  I moved my trip up and will be in Boston on March 14. Can you drive down to meet me?

  Susannah immediately wrote back and asked Lynda to suggest both a time and place; she was totally flexible and would accommodate herself to Lynda’s schedule. Then she turned to her black leather Moleskin planner and used a red Sharpie to circle the date. But she didn’t really need to; she’d already committed it to memory.

  • • •

  There was snow coming down the day Susannah drove to meet Lynda, tiny, dizzy flakes that clung briefly to the windshield before the wipers dispersed them. In Susannah’s view, it was a negligible, almost inconsequential snowfall. Only a blizzard would have kept her from this meeting, and maybe not even that. The knowledge about her mother and Dave Renfew was throbbing inside her like a pulse; she just prayed Lynda would be able to confirm it. Or by some unimaginable miracle, deny it.

  There weren’t many cars on the road driving down to Massachusetts, but as she neared Boston, traffic grew heavier. Still, it wasn’t a long drive and she thought that, later in the spring, she might bring the kids—or kid, if Calista was still giving her the cold shoulder—to the Museum of Fine Arts, which was where she was now headed. Lynda had suggested it, actually. There was a show of Japanese woodcuts she had wanted to see in the morning, and she told Susannah to meet her in the coffee shop at noon. “I hope you don’t mind,” she’d said. “But I had to cut my trip short and this was the only time available.”

  Traffic notwithstanding, Susannah arrived at the museum early; she had given herself more than enough time for the trip. After she sprang for the valet parking near the Huntington Avenue entrance, she went inside. Lynda was somewhere in this building, no doubt looking at images of kimono-clad geishas and water lilies floating in ponds, but even in her eagerness she did not want to intrude. Besides, she didn’t want Lynda to be distracted when they talked.

  So she decided to walk around the museum by herself for a bit; she had never been here. And when she scanned the museum’s map, she knew exactly where she wanted to go: the eighteenth-century American galleries. Her laptop was at home but her Moleskine was in her bag; this could be an impromptu research trip.

  She started with the paintings, the stiff, mannered portraits that aspired to the ease and fluency of their European counterparts but somehow failed. Pausing in front of an image of Mrs. Henry Bromfield, she took in the inexpertly rendered blue satin gown, the obviously fake landscape behind her, and the tiny flower the sitter held between her thumb and index finger. Susannah leaned closer to read the label. The artist was John Greenwood, one of the first native-born American painters; he’d been trained by Thomas Johnston, a Bostonian heraldic painter and engraver. Next was a family portrait by Greenwood, with several women seated around a small table and the men standing behind them. This one was marginally more engaging, chiefly because of the basket of needlework and the flame stitch canvas work displayed on the table. There was something observed and specific about those humble objects; the artist wasn’t just relying on tired conventions like the grand vista or the flower.

  Susannah left the painting gallery and found her way to examples of furniture, pottery, and needlework. Like her mother, Ruth Blay had been an excellent seamstress; she would have appreciated the tight quilting and tufting on these blankets, the careful stitches in an embroidered table runner. She made some notes before moving on. Here were more artifacts to enliven the fictional world she was creating: a brass-trimmed dressing table made, the wall label said, of San Domingo mahogany, yellow poplar, and cedar. And what about this side table out of whose exquisitely carved leg a human face emerged? These were the things in which she could see and feel Betsey and Ruth and Prudence; these objects still held a whiff of the times they had lived in and through. She found herself so entranced that the pinging of her phone, letting her know there was a text, actually came as a surprise.

  I’m in the Garden Café, waiting. Should I order you a coffee?

  Lynda! Susannah immediately left the gallery and found her way to the café. Seated alone at a table was a slim, deeply tanned woman with a loose gray-blond braid hanging down her back. She rose when she saw Susannah approach and they hugged.

  “It’s good to see you,” Lynda said when they were sitting down again. “Really good.” Her face, close up, was lined and spotted with sun damage, but in the burnt sienna landscape of her face, her green eyes were bright and intelligent.

  “Thank you for making time for me,” Susannah said. “I know you’ve had to pack a lot into this trip.”

  “I don’t get here very often,” Lynda said. “Tulum is pretty far from New England.”

  “In every way possible,” said Susannah. “Do you like living there?”

  “What’s not to like?” said Lynda. “I call it Paradise Regained.” She sipped her coffee and nudged a container in Susannah’s direction. “I ordered it black so you can add milk and sugar if you want.”

  Susannah put her hand on the container but did not pick it up. How to begin? She’d been thinking about this meeting for so long, but now that she was actually here, she found herself strangely silent, at least about what mattered most. Fortunately, Lynda was still talking.

  “. . . so you didn’t come to the New Hampshire house after your mother died, did you? I was trying to remember the last time I saw you.”

  “It was at the funeral. I never got to New Hampshire. Jack was a baby and Charlie had broken his wrist, so he was pretty much out of commission. Dealing with the house in New Jersey was all I could handle. You did everything in New Hampshire and I’m very grateful to you for it.”

  “I know you are, sweetie. And I was so glad you didn’t sell the place. Your mother loved it so.”

  “She did, didn’t she?” Susannah saw her opening; she just had to be brave to walk through it. “I’ve been talking to people that knew her, and they all say that.”

  “Whom have you been talking to?” Lynda looked interested.

  “Janet Durbin, for one.”

  “Janet! Don’t tell me she’s still at the library?”

  “She is. Also Todd Rettler and George Ma
rtin.”

  “I can’t believe it! George was her good buddy when she lived on the pond. And Todd was her boss but a friend too. So he’s still alive?”

  “He is, and he’s doing fine. Not like poor Harry Snady.”

  “Don’t tell me you saw Snady.” Lynda’s green eyes opened very wide.

  “I did. And then just a day later, he died.”

  Lynda seemed to be taking this in. “That’s a shame. But I can’t believe that wife of his let you near him. She was wildly jealous of your mother, you know. Harry had a thing for her and it made Deedee nuts.”

  “Did my mother ‘have a thing’ for him?” Susannah said quietly.

  “Harry?” Lynda seemed to be studying her. “No. Not possible.”

  “Why not?” asked Susannah.

  “Because she would have told me.” Lynda said.

  “Then he wasn’t my mother’s lover?” Susannah now found herself wishing it had been Harry; it would have made things so much less . . . complicated.

  “What makes you think your mother had a lover?”

  Susannah looked straight into those clear green eyes. “Evidence, that’s what. A note, poems, ticket stubs, a menu. And a red silk bow tie that belonged to Dave Renfew.”

  Lynda’s gaze did not waver. “So you know.” She knotted her bony, tanned fingers together.

  “Then it’s true.”

  “She confided in me, yes.”

  “But how could she? What about my father? And what about me?”

  “They never wanted to hurt anyone.” Lynda reached out to put her hand on Susannah’s. “Though I think your father knew anyway. That’s why she left the pond, and the house. She moved to New Jersey with you and your father; she never saw Dave again.”