Mother’s outstretched hand beckoned, and Celeste took it, settling on the edge of the bed, fearful of hurting her.
“And me?”
“Of course,” she repeated. What a strange conversation to have on such an exciting day. Mother’s hand was soft and plump and of so perfect a temperature—neither hot nor cold—that Celeste could hardly tell where her touch ended and her mother’s began.
“I haven’t always been a very good . . . person.”
Celeste leaned over and kissed her dry cheek. “Don’t be silly.”
“We left so much behind in Chicago. We left everything. . . .”
She often fell into these maudlin reminiscences about Chicago, as if they didn’t have everything they needed right here. A home, each other, and now a chance for Daddy to fulfill his dream. She supposed Mother was talking about the baby, the little girl who died before Celeste was even born. The one where Calvin got so mixed up, calling Celeste that baby’s ghost. She didn’t want to talk to her mother right now, not about anything so sad, so she gave her hand a squeeze and promised to send Graciela up with tea. “In fact,” she said, “I’ll bring it up myself if you like. And read to you. Would you like that?” She loved to read aloud to anyone who would listen. It gave her a chance to practice her accents.
“No. I have a better idea. You should go with your father.”
“Me? Why would I—?”
“You’re two of a kind, with all your silliness and dreams.”
“But this is an important meeting, with very important men.” Hadn’t she been listening to a word her father said all these years?
“All the more reason to bring a sweet little girl in tow. They’ll be less likely to be unkind if you are there.”
“Why would they be—?”
“Do you think this is the first meeting your father has ever had with very important men? Go.”
“What if he won’t allow me to go?”
“Remind him that you are his daughter. In fact, you’re his muse, and then tell him your mother insists.”
Thrilled at the prospect and armed with her mother’s blessing, Celeste ran quickly into her own bedroom and chose a wine-colored velvet ribbon from her top drawer. Earlier in the day Graciela had given her an intricate braid that began at her crown, which she looped and secured at her nape with the ribbon. She quickly changed from her play clothes into one of her nicest school dresses and grabbed her shoes, thinking she could hook the buttons while Daddy finished dressing.
Her stockinged feet made no sound on the stairs, and she moved slowly with one hand on the banister lest she slip. She rounded the corner into the entryway, announcing that Mother had the most wonderful idea, and came upon her father and Graciela stepping away from each other. Graciela’s hands flew to her mouth and tears glistened in her eyes.
“Perdón.” She spoke the word behind her silver-and-turquoise rings as she hustled past without giving Celeste so much as a glance. Her father, too, seemed reluctant to look at her, and busied himself smoothing his already-smooth hair.
“Is everything all right?” she asked. “Were you angry with Graciela about forgetting your tie? Because everything turned out fine. She found it, didn’t she? Nice and steamed.”
“What are you—?” He looked confused and then at peace. “No, no. Nothing like that. Everything’s fine.”
“She seemed upset.”
“It’s fine.”
He took the vest and slipped his arms through, but Celeste could tell immediately that he’d misaligned the buttons. She giggled at his gaffe and offered to complete the task for him. He acquiesced and held his arms limp at his sides while she deftly unbuttoned and rebuttoned the vest, happy to be needed.
“There.” She stepped back to give him room to pull on his suit jacket and fuss with the lapels. “You look very handsome.”
He did, even with the fine lines at the corners of his eyes and the touch of gray in his sideburns. Not like other girls’ fathers, those she saw at school functions and in their neighborhood. They were paunchy or bald with sagging faces and puffy eyes. Guilt tugged as she thought—as she often did—that her father was so much more handsome than her mother was beautiful. He was so trim, so disciplined in his appearance, while Mother had been to the dressmaker’s last week because she’d grown too fat for most of what she had. She’d developed a soft roll beneath her chin and was beginning to move with a kind of breathless lumbering—when she moved at all.
“Mother said I should go with you.”
He stopped in his preening long enough to give her a measured look. “She did?”
“Can I, please, Daddy? I’ll sit quiet as a mouse, I promise.”
“What possible reason could you have for going?”
“I could help you carry your things.” She didn’t want to share her mother’s remarks.
“I can carry them myself.”
“The papers and the film?”
He chuckled, and then his eyes sparked with an idea. He tucked his thumb under her chin and raised her face, looking at it from one angle and the next. “Of course.”
She rose to her toes. “Do you mean it?”
“When they see you in the flesh, and then what I’ve done for you on film . . .”
He didn’t finish the sentence, but she fully understood. “Does that make us in cahoots?”
“I suppose it does.” He stooped to pick up the small leather satchel waiting by the door. “But this won’t have to be a secret.”
THE WRITTEN CONFESSION OF MARGUERITE DUFRANE, PAGES 67–79
YOU MIGHT BE SURPRISED to know that it was my idea to go to California. Arthur would have everybody believe otherwise, going on and on about how bringing color to film meant the fulfillment of a chemical engineer’s dream. Poppycock. I concur that his interest was piqued when he went to that first symposium the week you were born, and I also know by now that his desire to move to that godforsaken coastal village had little to do with making movies. Had I been privy to such future revelations, I might not have urged my husband in that direction. For example, I might not have made it a point, each and every winter, to complain about the bitter coldness or the exhaustion of bundling children up to play outside for an hour. I might not have peppered every dinner conversation about my growing dissatisfaction with our church, and our friends, and the haunted draftiness of our rambling family home.
Somehow I knew, from the day you were born, that I would have to secret you away to keep you to myself. I thought at first we would be hiding from your mother. But even after that fear was allayed, I knew it would be far too easy to simply keep you. You see, I learned when Mary died that we cannot decide what will and will not be our earthly treasures. Only God can keep those accounts. And so, in those first few years, when I had my beautiful baby girl, and a handsome son and husband, and a stately family home with all the privilege that such allows, and a church with my name on a brass plate, and a few friends still willing to adhere to the ever-more-archaic calling hours . . . well, how selfish it would be to think I would pass from this life into the next with all those blessings intact.
Above all, I wanted to keep you, my Celeste, because you had come at such a price. And the price grew and grew and grew.
It is good to remember that I pen this at our attorney’s behest, to shine the light on my guilt, my manipulations, my orchestration of the imprisonment of that poor girl, and I wonder if he will let it stand, given the chink it reveals in his own breastplate of righteousness. But it is so important to me, my dear, dear Celeste, that you not see me as some monstrous puppeteer, controlling erstwhile honorable men. Judge Stephens was more than willing to trade her freedom for his reputation, and Christopher Parker, Esquire, for all his nobility, allowed greed to temporarily stay his integrity. But unlike Job, who sat in the ash heap among three advisers who would urge him to look to his own sin, I employed three duplicitous men to absolve me of my own. I’ve already given full account of one and shall now tell you of the sec
ond. The third—Christopher Parker himself—I’m loath to unveil, knowing your affection for him.
Two years before our departure to California, I received a letter from Judge Stephens. Not from him exactly, I suppose, but from his wife, informing me that he had died peacefully in his sleep the week before, and that she had found this letter—enclosed in an envelope with his signature across the seal—and a note informing any who found it to mail it to me immediately upon his death.
I remember Calvin bringing it to me, always one to take on what little responsibilities he could. He loved to take the mail from where it landed on the floor and march around the house to deliver it directly into my hands. In truth, it was a game I’d introduced years before, making believe he was a Union spy, and each piece of mail a secret message to me, General Grant. Not until I held Judge Stephens’s letter in my shaking hands did I realize how fortuitous such play would be. I thanked Calvin with a salute, then ordered him to take Private Celeste downstairs for a snack.
The letter was, for all intents and purposes, a confession, much like this I write now, only his begged forgiveness not only for his miscarriage of justice, but also for those hidden sins that made his honor so easily defiled. He also gave fair warning that an identical document was set to be delivered to Warden Webb at the old Bridewell Prison, exactly one year thence.
I can still recall his words: I want you to have time, Marguerite, to confront your sin and confess your crime before all you hold dear is stripped away.
When I read that, I felt the weight of my Mary in my arms. So much had been stripped away already. I couldn’t imagine what more I could give.
One year. I could live with the sword of Damocles poised over our family’s head, or I could make some attempt to stave off disaster.
I must have written fifty letters to Mr. Webb, but each was burned in the ash can. How could I possibly appeal to a man I’d never met? With Judge Stephens, I had the advantage of knowing his proclivities, and with young Parker, I could capitalize on his ambition. But this man? What could I do in one year to prepare for such a confrontation?
First, acting on an instinct as old as the sexes, I put myself on a steady diet of nothing but weak tea, two slices of bread, and one spoonful of whatever supper Mrs. Gibbons had prepared each night.
At first, my body rebelled, refusing to nudge a single inch. Then, after a rigorous course of enemas and certain black, bitter herbs, I found myself melting away. For a time, I smoked cigarettes constantly, finding them to help with the pangs of hunger and generally dull my taste for the little food I did eat. But your father found that to be a vile habit, and once I could fit into one or two of the dresses I wore before Mary, I gave it up completely.
Looking back, I think nothing made it more clear to me just how much time had passed since Mary was taken from me than did putting on those dresses.
And so I went to the old Bridewell.
Never once in all this time had I allowed myself to be within ten steps of the place, not that I ever had to turn down any social invitation in order to keep my distance. Even on this day, I intended to have my hired car drop me three blocks north, but as I clutched my handbag closer and tighter with each step, I turned back and leaped into its safety.
“To the correctional house,” I said, and when the driver stopped, I gave him five dollars and told him not to move an inch.
I pause now to say this not to pacify those who rightfully criticize my actions, but to state what became apparent to me in that moment. Had I not known the true nature of this facility, I might have thought myself standing outside a once-respectable boarding school gone past its prime. Long buildings, redbrick walls—even the high iron gate was fashioned with attractive scrolls. The sight, in fact, assuaged my guilt, as it seemed to affirm what I had told Arthur: that she had been sent to a reformatory, and her mother followed.
To this date, I count that as my only outright lie.
I remember thinking that she was in there, somewhere, and the thought of a possible confrontation hurried my steps through the visitors’ entrance and up the three flights of stairs, where I hoped to have an audience with the warden. I’d made no appointment, not knowing how I could possibly relay the nature of my business, but my upbringing and status had taught me one very important lesson: one must simply comport oneself as if one belongs. I decided I was just as entitled to be there as anybody else, and with that attitude I introduced myself to the diminutive woman behind the desk, announcing that I was there to speak with Warden Webb.
Not surprisingly, she hopped right up, poked her head through a secondary door, and in the next minute summoned me inside.
It took no more than one step across the threshold for me to realize that I could have spent the previous six months stuffing myself with Mrs. Gibbons’s cream pies. Warden Webb appeared less inclined to succumb to a woman’s charm than a hound dog to give chase to a rock. He was a small man composed entirely of droops—his eyes, his jowls, even his stomach over the top of his pants. I’d like to say there was a sternness to him, but that cannot be interpreted as any sort of maliciousness on his part. Spartan might be a better word. His office consisted of one desk, three chairs, one window, one filing cabinet, and a candlestick telephone. Not a spot of green or a family photograph. There was, however, a row of photographs depicting six black-robed judges, Judge Stephens among them, and a quaint cross-stitch hanging on one wall with this message: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
At the time, it seemed a cruel statement, as truth had probably played a role in landing most of the prisoners in this place. Most, though not all. For me, this verse proved to be an inspiration.
Having settled myself in one of the two chairs opposite his desk, I assumed an imploring pose and introduced myself before inquiring as to whether or not he knew of a prisoner named Dana Lundgren.
He looked confused at first, protesting that his facility housed nearly two thousand inmates, and he could hardly be expected to recall the name of a single one. Then he got up and went to his file cabinet, opened it, and—to my relief—found nothing. Going to the door, he summoned, “Mrs. Tooley?” and she stepped right up to be of service. After asking me to repeat the name, she went to yet another drawer and produced a thin, brown folder.
“Dana’s one of the young’uns,” she said, clucking at the shame of it.
Left alone again, he read through the few pages in the folder as I watched, fingers itching to snatch the papers away. When he’d finished, he looked up. “This is a very serious crime.”
I told him it was my daughter who had been killed, and he shook his head in commiseration. I could hear his loose lips flap in the silent office. He himself had not been a part of her processing. “But,” he said, “that often happens with the children.”
For the next few minutes, I told him one carefully chosen truth after another. That I believed Dana Lundgren to be a deranged, jealous girl, envious of my family. That I had another daughter now, given to me by God to help heal me from my loss, but that I had nightmares of this girl somehow stealing my Celeste away from me. That I had yet, in all these years, to receive a single communication from her in which she reached out for forgiveness. She’d not even been in contact with her mother.
“Is that why you’re visiting me today?”
Before I could answer, the first bits of rain pelted against his window, the kind of miserable, cold rain that plagues the springtime, and I told him, yes, that was part of the reason.
“And we are keeping her housed with our children.” He didn’t say this in any way to invite a comment, so I made none.
Then, having given him time to relish that thought, I opened my handbag, produced Judge Stephens’s letter, and asked if he’d received one of the same.
“No,” he said, reaching for it, “not that I’m aware.”
Handing it over, I told him that I’d found its contents quite disturbing, like the ramblings of an old man caught in the
throes of dementia, and asked after the judge’s health.
“He’s dead these last six months, but went with a sound mind as far as I knew.”
I could tell that the man relished being thus consulted, as all bureaucratic cogs fancy themselves as deserving far more power than they are ever permitted to wield.
I asked, then, why would he send me such a letter? Because, surely I had no sway over his sentencing. I’d been far too overcome with grief to even attend the inquest, as the record indicated. I went months without leaving my house. Why, Judge Stephens even wrote me the sweetest note after Mary was killed, saying he would do all he could for me.
(I even produced the note in question. Arthur used to accuse me of keeping every scrap of paper needlessly.)
“Puzzling, indeed.” And he puzzled, and he puzzled. “What do you make of this, what he says about the other young men whose lives he may have ruined?”
I took my time there, tapping my chin and watching the rain, as if deep in thought, then suggested maybe Judge Stephens was referring to other young prisoners—children whose lives had been severely impacted from such minor infractions.
“You know, I’ve often thought the very same thing. That we do a disservice, labeling such young people as deviants. The world is changing. There have been studies, you know.”
Feigning fascination with his insight, I leaned forward and reminded him of the fact that there were those who were, in fact, dangerous. Murderously so. And then we heard an awful sound coming from the courtyard.
He went straightaway to the window, motioning for me to stay back in an exaggerated gesture of protection. Still, I moved and stood just behind his elbow, marveling at the sight below.
Her.
Years had passed, but I knew that face, that scrawny little body. Now her hair was plastered wet with rain, and she stood in the middle of the muddy yard, scraps of paper strewn about her, waving her arms and screaming incoherently at the frozen forms of bedraggled children dotting her realm.
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