by Mary Volmer
“She offered as a favor to Mutti when I was still a very young man. But I never felt . . .”
He looked at the chair where his cane lay. He didn’t have to say anything more. I knew how he felt.
Old Man Werner was smitten with Willa. Everyone could see that, though no one suspected him to be William’s father. He was very old (more than twice her age) for one thing, and too much the moralist. As a young man, he’d been a merchant mariner, a lecherous fool. He told this to anyone who would listen. Testif ied, he called it. Yes, he’d whored. Yes, he’d cheated and gambled. Then God took his wife to punish him and sent cries of slaves he’d transported to torture his sleep. One day, one of those voices told him to sell his share of the ship, go north on the river to found a town and atone for his sins. No one knew he’d left children behind until much later when his son came north to join him in business. No one knew until the war began that his daughter was the scandalous Miss Rose.
Mr. Dryfus wasn’t sure when or how Werner met Willa Stark. But for all his testifying and moralizing, Werner’s devotion to her never waivered.
“Just an old man’s fancy, we thought. But when Willa died eight, nine years ago, about the same time I bought the shop, a year I guess, before William returned, he locked himself in the manor and he never came out again.”
Mr. Dryfus rubbed his hands over his face, looked over at me. The day outside had clouded over. Wind tapped at the shutters.
Clara was going to tell William about Old Man Werner when he returned, if he returned. Yet when he did, Clara gave him Willa’s jewelry—a few bracelets, necklaces, and charms—but not the letters.
“Why not?” I had forgotten myself and taken a seat.
“I don’t know. He wasn’t the same anymore. Still every bit as spoiled and belligerent, but not the same. Not quite right.”
We sat silent for a moment, but I could feel, building since the second mention of those letters, a foreboding I was helpless to ignore.
“Mr. Dryfus. Mr. Dryfus, you still have them, don’t you? The letters?”
He said nothing, but stood, circled the desk and limped through the door. I understood this to mean he was through with me, and I was about to retreat, should have maybe, when he returned with a bundle of envelopes tied with a string and a spooked expression on his face. He closed the door again. He put the bundle on the desk before me and stepped back.
“Go on.” He remained standing, clutching his meerschaum pipe hard enough to make dust. Little John cried out. He closed his eyes to the sound. “Go on,” he said again.
The f irst letter had been much read, the envelope tattered and smudged, the handwriting, styled, precise, reassuringly unfamiliar.
My Dear Willa, I read: After the f irst snow in Reliance, but few leaves stop the eye short of the horizon . . .
I stopped. I put the letter face down, for of course I knew the words by heart, and felt my heart tighten. I might have dropped to my knees and hidden under the desk if doing so could have prevented that dreadful understanding from settling upon me.
Old Man had written the letters I so cherished. Not William.
Oh my beautiful letters! I should not have asked to see them. Why had I asked? And why was Mr. Dryfus still watching me like that, rigid as a man on a witness stand?
“For some time”—he spoke to the wall behind me—“I have felt contrition for this treachery, which I did not orchestrate, but did nothing to expose, and . . .”
“Mr. Dryfus.”
“. . . and for pretending a greater capacity for romantic expression than I possess.”
It had been Hanley, he explained. Hanley had copied those letters, and Hanley had posted them, at Clara’s bidding. Dear Clara. She’d been afraid her son would end his days alone. By the time Mr. Dryfus learned he’d asked Mama to marry him, we were on our way.
“At f irst I kept silent, for spite, I suppose. I didn’t expect she’d stay. I didn’t expect . . .” Somewhere near the kitchen, Little John squealed. Mr. Dryfus went white. He took a breath. “I have tried. I have tried, but I f ind I cannot bring myself to tell your sister the truth, to disappoint her, in case . . .”
Stop talking. Why didn’t he just stop? “Mr. Dryfus.”
“No, hear me out, please. I am asking,” he continued. “I ask you to be discreet with what I have told you about William, but you may do with my confession as you see f it. I only hope . . .” He gathered himself. “I only hope that in time your sister might forgive such deliberate deception. There. That is all.”
He gripped that pipe, waiting, a muted agony on his face. And what could I say? What did he expect from me? To forgive him? To make Mama forgive him? If he understood anything at all about Mama, he’d know she had few scruples about necessary deceptions.
“Madelyn?” said Mr. Dryfus.
I had nothing to say; nothing to say to Mama, either, even as she followed me, worried, out the shop door to the sidewalk, not with so many of my notions shattering in pieces around me.
“Maddy,” she said. “Maddy,” catching my arm. “You’re not in trouble, are you?”
Mama’s beautiful eyes searched mine. Over her shoulder, I could see Hanley and Mr. Dryfus, Little John in his arms, watching from the shop front, and I knew I’d never tell. About those letters, or Little John. What was I good for, after all, but keeping secrets?
“I’m not in trouble,” I told her. Not the kind she meant, anyway.
35
The next morning, Miss Rose sent Mrs. Hardrow in the hansom to fetch William. She would need his blessing, now, to remain in the manor. I found myself in the library with Mrs. French, as usual, staring at a blank page. My mind was mush. I’d slept little, the house too quiet, my head loud with thoughts, the bed too big and empty without Lipman thrashing. When I gave up trying and came downstairs, I found Mrs. French bent over the same mountain of f inancial records she’d been scouring the night before. I don’t think she slept at all.
“Mrs. French?” I asked, f inally putting my pen aside. “What is probate?”
“Look it up,” she said, without looking up.
I already had. “So this will. It might not be legal?”
“This has what to do with your assignment?”
Not a thing, but Mrs. French, eyes red behind her oculars, relented. She eased back in her chair.
“If the will was written under duress, or, if the testator, that is Mr. Werner, was not of sound mind at the time of the writing then no, it might not be legal. But, it is unlikely either of these conditions can be proven unequivocally. To do so would require considerable resources.”
I thought about this. “Money?” I said. “You mean money don’t you. Doesn’t Miss Rose have money?”
“Does. Did.” She plucked her oculars from her nose, rubbed the bridge. “To be perfectly honest, Madelyn, I don’t know. She has been borrowing on speculation, against her inheritance.” Then, seeing my blank expression, “Borrowing against the promise of her father’s money.” I nodded, though the clarif ication still outstripped my understanding. “I suppose I knew this. But I . . . Well, I didn’t realize the extent. If I had known, I would have, what, reasoned with her?”
At the thought, an incredulous little laugh overcame her. She sobered. “Perhaps I didn’t want to know.” She pushed back from the table. “It would be better to come to terms out of court, but even if Mr. Stark is agreeable to some sort of compromise, I don’t think there will be enough to cover her debts, and the nephews—”
The front door slammed. We felt a gasp of air. Heard voices in the entryway. The hansom had returned, Mrs. Hardrow with it, but no William. Miss Rose, poised by the staircase in one of her nicest walking dresses, puffed up so large I thought she might burst her stays.
“He said what? What did he say?”
Mrs. Hardrow could not meet her eyes.
“He sai
d that if you wish to speak with him, you may come and see him in his studio.”
“I may? Mrs. French did you hear that? I may come?” But as she turned to climb the stairs, I felt as much as saw the fear beneath that mask of amusement. “Are you coming, Mrs. Hardrow?”
When the two women reappeared a half hour later, Miss Rose again wore her mourning costume—black lace, black ostrich feather hat—and climbed into the hansom with a dignity so ferocious the gelding’s ears stood rigid.
Mrs. French and I returned to the library. I pretended to make progress on my composition, but could hardly remember the assignment. Mrs. French turned pages, turned back. We did this for more than an hour until we heard carriage wheels on the drive. Violet rushed from the music room. Lizzette and Susan, their heads anyway, appeared one after the other like nervous pigeons from the second-floor balcony. The statues, the portraits, the very walls of the manor seemed to brace themselves as Miss Rose strode through the door. Taking in the room with one slow, forceful sweep of the head, she tossed her gloves and stole aside, ascended the stairs to her bedroom, and slammed the door.
Miss Rose took to her bed. Mrs. French went walking the river alone. That night Violet and I ate in the kitchen with Alby and Nettle; after dinner, Alby pulled me into the humid cave of the scullery. From her pocket she produced a tarnished object.
“That’s a spoon, Alby,” I said dismissively.
“It’s a silver spoon,” she said. “And there’s three more sets in that armoire in the basement. You know how far west a few of these will take us?”
“No. And neither do you.”
“What? You thinking about Miss Rose? Well, don’t. Probably got buckets of money stashed somewhere, what with all those dead husbands. And what do I care about Miss Rose? Why do you care, Maddy, huh?”
I couldn’t put words to why.
“Anyway,” said Alby, “ain’t Miss Rose’s spoon, is it? Never was, was it? Maybe . . .” She poked me with the spoon.
“Stop.”
“Maybe I’m stealing from your luuver. That it? Ah shit, Maddy. Lizzette saw you and Mr. Stark heading behind the garden shed during the funeral, and I seen your face after. Thought you was smarter than all that foolishness. What? Now you got nothing to say?”
Nothing. I couldn’t say anything, for I knew then what I must have known all along. William’s kisses had never meant anything. He had been protecting himself. Keeping me quiet. None of those touches had meant love.
“Alby!” cried Nettle in the kitchen. “Where’d you go off to?”
“Anyway,” said Alby, “don’t care do I, who it belongs to? Got to take care of myself. In my hand it belongs to me. And shoot me dead if you don’t f ind more than a spoon under Lizzette’s pillow by the end of the week. Might as well have it as Miss Rose, or Mr. Stark, or this Probate.
“Listen. You listening, Maddy? Cyrus found me a map west and I picked out a likely spot. South Dakota. Gold, Maddy.” Her eyes lit, but there it was, a sharp smell of fear in the center of her optimism. “Go with me. I know enough to cook for a rougher sort. Go with me.”
“Alby, I don’t . . .”
“Well, I ain’t going to wait on you forever. A bit. See how things go around here. But, I’m telling you. Ain’t afraid of going alone.” She stepped back, red hair catching a seam of white light through the ground-level window. “I ain’t! I’ll go without you. Don’t think I won’t.”
She waited, holding her breath, for a response I couldn’t give, then walked out. I slumped against the drying cabinet. Clean plates clinked. Flies thumped against the window.
Was Alby right? Could I just run off, leave Mama and Reliance, start over new in the West? I didn’t want to think anymore. What was thinking worth anyway, when so much of my thinking turned out wrong?
Whatever else transpired in the exchange between William and Miss Rose, he allowed us to stay in the house. For a while, several weeks at least, life continued more or less as usual. Each morning I attended lessons with Mrs. French, and began to think (to hope, really) that she’d been wrong about Miss Rose’s debts. I’d thought of Miss Rose’s wealth as a physical thing, a high wall, nothing that could be lost or squandered—and thus far nothing in our routine suggested a breach.
I could almost convince myself everything would be all right. What did it matter if William hadn’t written those letters about the river? Didn’t mean he couldn’t write letters just like them, if he wanted; write to me one day. I hated myself for trying, but I thought maybe, in time, I could forget Aileen, a nobody. Forget the baby. Then I’d sleep the night through without dark, formless dreams jolting me awake. Miss Rose’s mood didn’t help. Work on her memoirs stagnated. Every day I sat tense and watchful as she shuffled through those scribbled pages of disjointed memories, hundreds, piling the desk, mumbling, “Hopeless. Hopeless.”
She blamed her block on Mr. Clemens for warning her away from structure, and on Mr. Stockwell, without saying why. And though she never blamed me, I felt the hulking weight of her judgment glaring from every angled reflection in the room. Each day I awaited her call with equal parts dread and longing, and each day found her lavender and rose scent growing thicker, stronger, like a last florid gasp of summer growth before decay. She was not well. Headaches came upon her often, and not even wigs and layers of fancy cloth could hide the diminished body beneath. Sometimes she’d forget herself, allow her manner to waver, her shoulders to slump, the old woman, bald and helpless, asserting herself.
“You are so lucky, Madelyn,” she said as we stood before the vanity on one of those awful days. “To be spared beauty. And its abandonment. Look at yourself. So lucky.”
A thin f inger tracing my stain. Hot breath, sour in my ear; the word lucky like a curse. I didn’t feel lucky, or, alluring either. I’d thought—Miss Rose had led me to believe—that becoming alluring would be like becoming educated, a capacity I might “by will and effort, attain.” For a while, I could imagine the alluring part, inside me, might overgrow my stain. But I didn’t anymore. It was one of the many things I desired that no amount of will or effort could give me. Alby was right. When people looked at me, they would see my stain f irst. I knew this wasn’t my fault, but I still felt like a failure.
Then Miss Rose began calling Violet and me to recite poems and to say what we most loved about her, and I failed here, too. Among Violet’s gifts was a talent for flattery I could not match. And anyway, how could I say that what I loved most was the bald head beneath Miss Rose’s wigs, or the promises she had made me? I couldn’t. Which was unfortunate, because daily the town’s approval was shifting in favor of Mr. Stockwell, and Miss Rose’s demand for our affections intensif ied.
Two weeks after the will had been read, Mrs. Drabney of the Wayward Home, always a demure and groveling presence, burst from the off ice.
“But you will produce your little plays? Miss Rose, am I right? Where, madam, are your priorities?”
Miss Rose, face bright as you please, but her voice full of thorns. “Why, you ungrateful leech.”
“Rose.” Mrs. French stepped between them.
“Not a shred of gratitude, not one shred for all I have done for her!” She shouted past Mrs. French after the retreating Drabney. “I always knew it. That presumptive insect!”
She raged for an hour, which, to be honest, put me more at ease than the cloak of forlorn composure she had been wearing. Things were not, and would not be, all right. Even as I tried once again to repair my idea of William, the effort was becoming exhausting. It was not just Aileen or the baby, but a whole ragbag of truths that, pieced together, made a picture of a man different from the one I’d invented to love me.
I knew, too, because Hanley told me, what people were saying about Miss Rose. Grumbles over her election scheme were flowering into declarations of impropriety. There was talk of bringing her to court for fraud, and now that word had spread a
bout the will, people like Mrs. Drabney of the Wayward Home, with nothing ill to say of Miss Rose so long as she could depend on her patronage, now could say nothing good.
“Well, I don’t feel sorry in the least!” said Nora, holding a yellow ribbon to Angela’s hair in Mrs. Smith’s dress shop. “That woman only came back to Reliance for the money, anyway. Serves her right! Putting on airs, I always said.”
Mrs. Smith, who should have said a word in Miss Rose’s defense, said nothing. “Why?” I demanded after they left, though I know why now. Successful shopkeepers are the world’s most talented politicians. Loyal as she might be to Miss Rose’s various causes, she knew better than to alienate paying customers.
Mama had slipped in the backdoor to the cutting room; Mrs. Smith motioned me to join her there.
“Maddy, someone told Mr. Stockwell about the womb veils. He found May Ann’s. Rifled through her personal items until he found it.
“That’s not all, Maddy. Listen. Are you listening?”
I was watching Mama. Mama in her stylish dress, Mama, a lady of business, who belonged here in this shop, on this street with Mr. Dryfus and Little John. Belonged making dresses, making money.
“I don’t think Miss Rose is right about Stockwell getting that girl pregnant.” Now I was listening. “I had a peek at May Ann’s house ledger. That girl . . .”
“Aileen,” I said. Mrs. Smith paused. “Her name,” I said, a lump of remorse in my throat. “It was Aileen.”
“Well, she left the Stockwell house last June, f ive months before she was found in the river.” She paused. “Maddy, don’t you see? If Mr. Stockwell . . . if he was the father, she would have been showing when they found her. They would have known she was pregnant. Tell Miss Rose, will you?”
I didn’t tell Miss Rose about Aileen leaving the Stockwells’ in June. I don’t know who I was protecting, William, or myself from the kind of def initive knowledge such a revelation would demand of me. Instead, I told myself William was right, that Aileen’s memory would suffer, that the truth wouldn’t change what happened. That it didn’t matter.