Addled

by JoeAnn Hart

  “If that’s the case, the book is meaningless.” Madeline had trouble making the key fit. “We can keep it from thieves, but we have no protection against liars. For all we know, we have the truth now, and she wants to change it.”

  “She’s a lawyer; she knows you only get one good chance to get a lie right. The truth you can squeeze in later, if necessary. The door doesn’t swing both ways.”

  Madeline couldn’t argue. She never could.

  “Hurry up.” Arietta poked at Madeline’s back with her cane, leaving a dark circle of ash among the daisies.

  Madeline finally got the compartment open and wondered how long the lock would last, and who could they get to repair it when it finally broke? Who could be let in? “What with Charles the way he is, and Phoebe where she is, it seems silly that I should be doing this at all. I’m hardly here these days, and who knows what the future will bring?”

  “Have faith. Phoebe and Charles are at awkward ages. I remember my Binkie at fifty. He got it into his head that what he needed was to sail around the world. Have you ever heard of such a thing? I just said no. Stay firm. That’s what they really want.”

  Madeline lifted the crumbly book with both hands. What exactly was there to say no to? Tell Charles not to go crazy? Should she have made a fuss when he began the sculpture class? And what if she had? Old Binkie Wingate, sour and dissipated to his miserable end—if that’s what happened when wives made them stay, then maybe she should let Charles go. Let him drift off into the hazy distance. A quick laugh escaped from her throat. Let him. As if she had any say in the matter. “We have to start thinking of what will happen if I’m no longer here.”

  “Has it come to that then?” When she took the book from Madeline, a fleck of leather binding fell to the rug. “If there is to be a divorce, you must petition for the Club membership.”

  Madeline rearranged the magazines and forced the swollen door shut. It was a shock, and a relief, to have the word out on the table at last. Divorce. “It’s Charles’s family that’s connected to the Club. I only married into it.”

  “Yes, but you are the mother of his daughter. The Queen Mother, so to speak. And this”—Arietta held up the book—“is Phoebe’s inheritance.”

  Madeline stood up and adjusted her dress before taking the book from her. “We’ve been through this before, Arietta. Haven’t you noticed Phoebe’s trying to bring down the Club, not carry it on?”

  “Then she’s putting an awful lot of effort into something she professes to hate.” Arietta pulled her handkerchief out of her sleeve, wet it with her tongue, and rubbed at a spot on her palm. “Time will prove me right. Now, hide the book until we need it.”

  “If we need it.”

  There was a knock. “Tea, Mrs. Wingate.”

  Madeline hurried to the window and lifted the seat, hiding the book in the empty space before unlocking the door. Luisa wheeled a cart in ahead of her. “Afternoon, ladies.”

  “Busy in the kitchen today, Luisa?” said Arietta, warming her narrow behind at the sputtering fire.

  Luisa arranged the tea items and uncovered the lemon squares. “Banquet tomorrow night, then over. Whew.” She crossed herself. “I get some sleep then, I tell you.”

  “Vita does such a lovely job. We are all atingle with anticipation.” Arietta bent to inspect the tray. “Very nice.” She lifted a lemon square, thick with confectioners’ sugar, from its doily.

  “You ring, ladies, you need me.”

  Arietta opened her eyes wide at the first bite of pastry, holding one hand under to catch the falling crumbs. Madeline prepared herself a cup of tea, selecting one with the strongest kick, Constant Comment. “Thank you, Luisa. You can leave the door open.”

  As Arietta mumbled a good-bye, a morsel fell from her mouth, and she quickly brushed it into the fire with her foot. They heard Luisa say something in the hall, and then Ellen Bruner appeared, framed in the open door.

  Madeline stopped pouring. Ellen must have come directly from court. She had on a short skirt and long jacket in brown tailored linen, edged in black, with the obvious severity of an expensive garment. Her heels were high, and her hair was low and slicked back, like some amphibious animal, which brought attention to what appeared to be gold Phillips head screws in her ears. Under one arm she carried a briefcase of ostrich skin. She smiled as if she’d learned how from a textbook.

  “Hello, Ellen.” Madeline walked over, intending to kiss her on the cheek, but Attorney Bruner held out a hand instead, her nails the color of blood. When they shook, a sense of foreboding passed to Madeline. Something was wrong. Ellen didn’t appear at all pregnant, and yet she didn’t seem quite ripe for sympathy either.

  Arietta finished her lemon square in one bite, then patted her lips with her handkerchief. “Madeline, finish pouring the tea. Ellen, sit down over here.”

  “No. I need the table. But please, you two sit.” Ellen established her territory firmly in the middle of the room and turned her back to them. She laid her briefcase on the table and unzipped it slowly, even liturgically.

  Arietta and Madeline glanced at each other. Madeline put their cups and saucers on the tea-scalded table in front of the hearth and stood uncertainly as orange spice filled the dank room. Arietta spoke as she carefully lowered herself into her chair. “Well, Ellen, have you come to make a change in the book then?” There was a wisp of confectioners’ sugar on her upper lip.

  Ellen turned to face them. In the warmth of the room, old acne scars seemed to melt through her coverup. “A couple of changes.”

  Arietta smiled, not looking at Ellen but at the fire next to her. “Conscience got the better of you then?”

  “Conscience?” Ellen squinted, deepening her crow’s feet, then turned to Madeline. “Is the door locked?”

  Madeline moved slowly across the room and secured the bolt, performing the duties of her own jailer. When she turned and leaned against the carved door, a heraldic shield, part of the intricate design, dug between her shoulder blades.

  “Could you get the book, please?” Ellen continued to take papers out of her briefcase and lay them out on the dark, fumed oak.

  Madeline looked at Arietta, who nodded. There was still sugar around her mouth, and Madeline licked her lips to indicate to Arietta to clean herself up. Then she went to retrieve the book, with Ellen’s emotionless eyes on her, the determined blankness that in predators conceals their next move. When Madeline turned, clutching the frail ledger, Ellen patted the table in front of her.

  “No,” said Arietta. “Madeline, just open it to the last entry, which is Mrs. Bruner’s. She may make any changes and addenda to it as she wishes before the baby arrives.” Arietta’s eyes rested on Ellen’s narrow waist. “And when is that happy date, dear?”

  Ellen pulled a Montblanc out of her inner jacket pocket, ignoring the ERCC promotional pen that Madeline held out for her. She looked briefly at her entry, dated July 13, 2003: “Ellen Gibowsky Bruner, of Watertown. Husband: Alexander Bruner. Biological father: Alexander Bruner.” For a moment, one so fleeting that Madeline was not sure it had ever been there, Ellen looked sad and a little human. But then, just as quickly, it was gone. The lawyer clicked her pen and crossed out the entry.

  “Oh,” said Madeline, making a consoling move toward her. “I’m so sorry.”

  Ellen tapped her pen on her palm, and it clinked on her wedding ring. “For what?”

  Madeline put her hand on her own stomach and was surprised at the ache she felt. “Your loss.”

  “There was nothing to lose.”

  Arietta, who had been taking a sip of tea, spritzed a bit from her mouth and onto the fire, making the hot embers hiss. “Nothing?”

  “I am here to represent Roger Rundlett in a matter that concerns the book.”

  “This is nonsense.” Arietta stood without the aid of her cane and placed her cup and saucer on the tea table. “Are you saying you falsified your pregnancy? You lied?”

  Ellen held up a legal document.
“I am going to make an adjustment to the book, with or without your cooperation. We can do it quietly, here today, or I can get a court order. My client has ascertained that he is the biological father of Nina Rundlett. The only one. Out of respect for tradition, and for you, Mrs. Wingate, he is not seeking damages for spreading misinformation. My job is only to see that the record be set straight. Why don’t you sit down and I’ll go over the details.”

  With that, Ellen looked at Madeline, who did not sit. She had wanted to regain some small connection with another human being, and instead, here was Ellen Bruner. How could she ever trust her judgment of people again? Was everyone a liar, all putting up false fronts?

  Arietta would not sit down either. Her veins thickened with the pulsing blood of generations of Club members, every corpuscle reacting against the intrusion of this legal interloper. She reached for her cane and tapped it against the fireplace, hitting one of the Roman divinities in the face. “Go on.”

  Ellen tightened the buttons on her jacket and looked down at her notes for a moment before speaking. “In late June, I was engaged by Roger Rundlett to investigate the events surrounding the termination of his daughter’s engagement. He had been informed by his wife that Nina, his daughter by his first wife, might have been sired by Mr. Willard Farnsworth.” Ellen looked up. “Gwen Rundlett claims she got this information from you, Mrs. Wingate.”

  “Has Nina found out?” asked Madeline. It seemed too much that the poor girl would have to cope with the memory of an unfaithful deceased mother as well as an unfaithful departed fiancé.

  “No. The first part of my job was to confirm the inscription in the book. And I did that, on July thirteenth, distracting your attention long enough to find Karen Rundlett’s entry of March twenty-second, 1980, where she indicated that the biological father might be either her husband or Farnsworth.”

  “That is very low.” Arietta closed in on Ellen.

  Madeline thought back. It was all there. What an idiot she’d been. First of all, Ellen had asked for regular tea, not herbal, the beverage of choice for preggies. Then she’d promptly spilled some of it on Arietta’s skirt, insisting Arietta go rinse it off right away. The moment she was out of the way, Ellen tearily claimed to have lost a contact lens. Madeline had attributed the events to new-mother nerves and got down on her own hands and knees to look so that Ellen would not get dizzy. And all the while, Bruner must have been quietly paging through the book.

  “You had no right,” said Arietta, her white head lowered like a butting animal.

  “Neither did you,” said Ellen. “Your enterprise terminated the engagement without first undertaking a complete investigation of the facts.”

  “We had enough facts to know the risks. If Karen Rundlett was uncertain as to who the father was, then how could we be sure? We prefer to err on the side of caution.”

  “I have advised my client that he could bring suit for your failure to take advantage of any and all avenues for uncovering the truth.” Ellen pulled out two medical forms from one of her piles and held them out for inspection. “DNA testing. It takes a bit of time—six weeks or more—but these Club marriages seem arranged from birth, so that shouldn’t have been a problem. The lab reports might be too technical for you, but let me read Dr. Coull’s statement.”

  Madeline sat down. Why hadn’t they thought of genetic testing? But under what guise could they have gotten samples? Through her confusion, she heard a few words about this and that chromosome—but they were enough. Ellen finished with “. . . therefore, Willard Farnsworth cannot be the father of Nina Rundlett.”

  “Don’t you need blood or something?” asked Madeline.

  “Easy enough for Nina. Mr. Rundlett sent her to Dr. Coull to have her throat swabbed for SARS after her trip to Europe. If she noticed she was in the office of a certified genetics counselor, she didn’t question it.”

  Madeline groaned audibly as she remembered Frank telling her how he’d seen Nina at the professional building.

  “Getting a cell sample from Mr. Farnsworth was trickier,” continued Ellen, “but manageable. Mr. Rundlett did not want the mess of legal maneuvers, which would have resulted in unpleasant publicity, and so he collected his own blood sample by forking Mr. Farnsworth. I’m sure you remember that evening. I’m afraid my client was more enthusiastic in his task than I advised. It was supposed to be more accident than attack.” She put her papers in a pile, then leaned back on the table, resting on her palms. “The results are conclusive. Mr. Farnsworth is not the father of Nina, and she is free to marry Eliot. Of course, that is hardly a possibility anymore, seeing as how their affections have been so brutally alienated. Not to mention the open hostilities between the families. But the important matter at hand, and for which I have been retained, is clearing up the misinformation in the book.”

  “What are you saying?” asked Arietta.

  “My client wants the record set straight and for me to notarize the change. The test results and a copy of Dr. Coull’s assessment are to be annexed to the book. Mr. Rundlett will not reveal the book’s existence to other male members; right now the book lives only in their minds as a colorful myth, if at all. Even my law partner—my husband, Alex—has been kept in the dark about the specifics of this case. In exchange, you must whisper the news of Nina’s true paternity among the female members who might have been privy to the breakup of the engagement.”

  Arietta was silent as she turned the situation over in her mind. Now that daggers were drawn, her first impulse was to send this woman out of the room, then ruin her with gossip until she resigned from the Club. But there was the greater obligation to the book to consider. Perhaps it was time to make an ally of this insufferable woman. “Then your client recognizes the complete and total authority of the book?” she said at last.

  “He does.” Ellen reached into her briefcase and pulled out her notary stamp.

  “Let’s get on with it then,” said Arietta.

  “Wait.” Madeline had difficulty composing her thoughts after such a stunning piece of information. “What are we doing? DNA testing makes the book outdated. From now on, paternity can be proven by a prick of a fork.”

  “It seems a most helpful tool,” said Arietta as she picked up one of the silver dessert forks fanned out on the tea tray. She lovingly ran her thumb over the elaborately engraved Eden Rock insignia on the handle. “I wish we could have everyone tested.”

  Madeline was aghast. “Why not exhume the dead while we’re at it?” In all the years she had helped Arietta with the book, it had seemed more ritualistic than anything, a quaint tradition that occasionally deterred accidental incest. But now, with medical opinions and legal documents, it was turning into something else altogether, something closely resembling a police state.

  “Let’s not forget to test the staff as well,” Ellen said, looking pointedly at Madeline, who cringed. When Ellen had held the pool house door open for her and Scott earlier that week, she had been both solicitous and smarmy.

  “The book causes more pain than prevents problems,” said Madeline, slightly flushed. “I think it’s time to end it.”

  Both Arietta and Ellen made a protective motion over the book. “Never let it be said that we are behind the times,” said Arietta. “We shall embrace modern technology. I must have this Dr. Coull over for cocktails.”

  “It’s too invasive,” said Madeline. “We should just let nature take its course from now on, and if the families have any uneasiness, let them deal with testing.”

  “Horse-feathers,” said Arietta. “Are prospective mothers-in-law to compare notes on whom they’ve slept with and when? And in this case, Karen’s secret went with her to her grave.”

  “The thing to do is put Coull up for membership,” said Ellen, thoughtfully twisting the screw in her ear.

  Arietta nodded. “Yes, make him one of our own.” She reached up to the mantel for her glasses and caught the eyes of Henry Fothergill above. Apart from his many amorous interests, he
also found time to change the main sport of the Club from horse racing to golf, a bold but widely successful action, and he seemed to smile approvingly on her own next move. She put on her glasses, blinked, and made a small correction on the page next to Karen Rundlett’s entry of 1980. Ellen clamped down hard with her stamp.

  “Now,” said Ellen, “I’d like to make another entry.”

  Madeline thought maybe this meant that Ellen was pregnant after all, and she reached out a hand to touch her arm. Ellen backed away. “Not for me.” A pained look passed across her face. “For another client. Could you open to the year 1999?”

  Madeline and Arietta looked at each other. Madeline shrugged and opened to a listing of five Club pregnancies that year. Arietta pulled her handkerchief from her sleeve and shook it out, using it to cover up the entries, leaving Ellen a blank space.

  “Don’t trust me?” Ellen asked.

  “It’s not your business.”

  “You’d be surprised what is my business.” Ellen pulled another sheet of paper from her pile. “Will you examine this statement carefully?”

  After Arietta read, she lowered her glasses. “The woman who wrote this was the manager before Gerard Wilton?”

  “Yes,” said Ellen. “I wasn’t joking about culturing the help. The poor woman didn’t discover her predicament until after she was fired, and had some romantic notions of single motherhood. She wanted to go it alone, but now I think she’d like some cash. She’d gotten a separation package from the Club, of course, most of it taken from the president’s discretionary fund, but the cost of raising a child can put a damper on the most independent of spirits.”

  “Well, he certainly wasn’t very discreet, was he?” said Arietta.

  Ellen folded her arms. “I have an appointment to see him now, here at the Club, before I call it quits for the long weekend. We’re looking at sexual harassment and paternity.”