“Come and sit,” she says, walking across the tiled floor to where a couple of rusted old camp chairs are set up against the wall.
“Susannah, are you sure you want to eat here?” I say, scanning the dirty floor, the piles of dead leaves that have collected in the corners.
She sits in one of the chairs.
“This is comfortable for you?”
“I came out here all the time before the accident,” she says. “It’s been ages since I’ve done it. Come, sit.” She pats the seat of the chair next to hers.
“Are you sure?”
“Please,” she says, lifting the silver scarf from her neck and wrapping it over the top of her head. “I’m only seventy, Bess. Don’t treat me like I have one foot in the grave.”
I sit down next to her.
“Henrietta and I used to spend a lot of time out here,” she says, a wan smile passing over her face.
“I have to confess something to you,” I say, acting on what I’d resolved to myself on the drive over.
“Ooh, good!” she says. “A confession!”
“I did some digging around town the other day, trying to learn more about her.”
“Henrietta?” she says, like this puzzles her.
I nod.
“Why?” she asks, clearly surprised.
“Well,” I start. “Forgive me for saying it, but every time her name comes up, a funny expression falls over your face. I feel, in a way, that if I want to understand you better—or, at least, your relationship to the town—then I need to understand her.” I decide to leave it at that, even though I promised myself that today would be the day I finally asked her about Henrietta’s death.
“Mm,” she says, looking out at the view. “How insightful.”
“I’m sorry if that’s too . . . personal. I hope that isn’t insulting.”
“No, no,” she says. “You’re not off the mark. In fact, you’re right on the money. The memories I have of her have never left me. She was such an essential part of my childhood. But since I moved back here, it’s all come rushing back in a way I didn’t expect.”
“It must be difficult.”
“Yes, it is,” she says. “Sometimes. But there are a lot of good memories, too. Like now, us sitting here . . . I’ve told you how my parents threw all those parties?”
“Yes.”
“Henrietta and I used to hang around in the kitchen during them—lurk offstage, if you will—and Bonnie, one of my mother’s cooks, would have this long wooden table in the center of the room covered in trays of party food. Canapés and finger sandwiches, tarts and petits fours. Always a ham with this Montmorency cherry sauce my father loved. We would wrap yeast rolls in these stiff cotton napkins my mother used and slip little blocks of cheese into the pockets of our dresses, pastries and petits fours, too. And then we’d bring it all up here and have a feast.”
Cindy suddenly appears in the window, bearing a basket wrapped in cloth. “Your lunch,” she says, holding it out for me to grab. As I do, she gives me a look that says she thinks our eating out here is as peculiar as I do, and maybe I’m just imagining it, but it suddenly seems like something between us shifts, like our eyes meeting is a silent acknowledgment that perhaps there is more to Susannah’s behavior than simple eccentricity.
I take the basket from her and place it between Susannah and me.
“Ah,” Susannah says, taking out two sandwiches wrapped in parchment. “Here we are. Cindy is good at following directions.”
“What is it?” I ask.
“Egg salad, with lots of dill and capers, just the way Henrietta liked it. I should have asked her to bring some champagne.”
“Champagne?”
“Yes,” she says. “Once, Henrietta and I stole a bottle from the butler’s pantry and drank it out here. What I didn’t tell Henrietta is that I had been stealing alcohol from those parties for years, usually drinking from the glasses that came back into the kitchen—you could count on the minister and his wife to not touch their wine, and the Perkins family, too. Anyway, the time Henrietta and I stole that bottle . . . We got so sick! We didn’t know it was meant to be sipped!”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen maybe? The other day I was lying in bed, just up from a nap, and I called for Cindy to get me a glass from the bottle I always keep in the refrigerator. That’s one good thing I learned from Teddy—he required that we always have a bottle of champagne at the ready. Anyhow, Cindy brought the flute to me and I drank it down in two gulps, watching the sky turn pink, missing the feeling of Henrietta’s head on my shoulder, tears running down my face.”
“You miss her,” I say, noticing her flowery description of the memory, how it’s almost as if she’s rehearsed the lines. Has she? Something about all this—her nostalgia, the spot where we’re eating—feels too orchestrated.
“It’s hard to be here without her. She loved those nights, and as much as I hated my parents’ parties—they were a reminder to me that I was not their priority—I loved that time with her.”
She takes a tiny bite of her sandwich and looks out at the mountains. “All my childhood memories include her,” she says. “All my good ones, at least. Though she was there for the bad ones, too.”
“What do you mean?” I say, wondering if this is my opening.
“Oh . . . ,” she says, a shadow falling over her face. “Just my mother . . .” She shakes her head. “There was this one time . . . Henrietta and I must have been ten or eleven . . . we found this stash of candy my mother kept in a storage closet in the basement. My father used to bring her boxes of chocolate when he traveled, probably to make up for whatever he did while he was gone.” She gives me a knowing look. “But my mother, being as rigid and regimented as she was, never touched them. So one day, Henrietta and I did. We would eat a bite out of one, then put it back, then take a bite out of another . . . We were like Lucy and Ethel, in that scene in the chocolate factory?”
“Yes,” I say, laughing a little.
“But my mother . . .” She shakes her head slowly, thinking about it. “We didn’t hear her coming. I think that was the first time Henrietta saw her hit me.”
“She hit you, Susannah?”
“Oh, yes,” she says. “All the time, Bess.”
“That must have been—”
She puts her hand out before I can continue. “It was,” she says. “It was as bad as you can imagine. But now you see why I clung to Henrietta. And later, Bradley.”
“It sounds like Henrietta was more like a sister to you,” I say. “It must have been awful for you when she died.” It feels cheap to do it, given how genuinely sad she seems recounting these stories, but I watch her face as I say it, searching for some clue.
She nods, her eyes half closed, as if she’s sunk back deep into some memory. “I was a fool to think that by running away, I could forget her. Still now, all these years later, my first thought when I wake up in the morning, when I’m still in that space between sleep and conscious thought, is of her. That sounds outlandish, I know, but it’s true.”
“Why do you think that is?” I ask, putting down my sandwich.
She looks down at her lap. “I just wish there was something I could have done. It is the regret of my life that I didn’t somehow stop her that night. Henrietta had so much life ahead of her.” She stuffs a hand into her pocket and pulls something out, a pink ribbon. It’s a dusty-rose color, shiny in spots, worn, like it’s been handled many times over the years. I wonder about its special significance for Susannah, if it’s a kind of lucky charm.
“This is one of her ribbons. She treasured her ribbons. She wore one every day,” Susannah says. “And with good reason. They reminded her of her mother.”
“How so?” I say.
“It’s a horrid story.” She pinches her mouth shut before continuing. “Her mother killed herself.”
“How terrible,” I say, remembering how William had told me this.
“Oh, it was g
ruesome.” She looks at me for a beat, as if considering whether to go on. “Bess, she hanged herself from one of their home’s rafters. She used an electrical cord that she’d cut off the iron. The ironing board and basket of clothing were right next to her when Mr. Martin found her. Henrietta was only ten months old. It was obviously postpartum depression, but of course nobody diagnosed those things back then. People just thought she was crazy. Honestly, she probably chose the better option.”
“The better option?” I say, unnerved by the way she’s put it.
“What?” she says, reading my expression. “You don’t understand how it was back then. She would’ve ended up in a mental hospital otherwise, receiving God knows what kind of treatment. Electroshock therapy, lobotomy . . . But the ribbon.” She hands it to me and I run it through my fingers. “Before she died, she made Henrietta the most beautiful christening gown. I saw it once. Henrietta had it folded up in the bottom of a drawer, where her daddy wouldn’t come across it. It had hand-sewn lace, the sweetest smocking across the chest, and a ribbon, just like this, running through the ruffle at the hem. When Henrietta was—hmm, let me think,” she says, tapping her finger against her chin. “Maybe about eight? Nine? She found the roll of ribbon in the bottom of her mother’s old sewing things when her father asked her to patch a hole in a pair of his pants. It was nice ribbon, you can see.” She holds it up in front of us, turning it like a precious artifact. “Imported velvet from France. The Perkinses used to carry that sort of thing in their store, back before they started selling Rubbermaid containers and Crystal Light or whatever it is they sell now. When Henrietta got up the nerve to ask her father about it, he told her that her mother had saved for her entire pregnancy to buy it.”
“That’s so touching.”
“Yes,” she says, taking the ribbon from me and coiling it around her finger. She seems more pensive suddenly.
“What is it?”
She grabs my hand, her fingernails digging into the fleshy pad of skin beneath my thumb. “On the morning when they found Henrietta’s body . . . ,” she starts. A gulping sound escapes from her mouth, and when I look into her eyes, I see tears beginning to well up. “I went to the family’s house, to give my condolences. He was . . .” She waves a hand and turns away from me. “I’m sorry,” she says.
“No, please,” I say. “I don’t want you to talk about it if it’s too painful.”
“Painful!” She takes a deep breath, then exhales, blowing like she’s extinguishing a candle. “Henrietta’s father was . . .” She pauses again. “You know, he was a hard worker. He’d been a handyman here at the house for years, and then he started working as a mechanic at the gas station next to the house that he and Henrietta lived in. He’d already been through so much, losing a wife, and then to lose Henrietta . . .” She looks up at the sky and shakes her head, like she still can’t accept it all these years later. “When I went to see him that day, we sat at their kitchen table and cried together and told some old stories.”
“And what happened to him?” I say, wondering whether she’ll confirm what William said, how he spent years trying to convince people that Henrietta’s death was suspicious.
“He died maybe twenty years ago,” she says. “And he died a lonely, bitter man, a horrible way to die.” A tear begins to fall down her cheek, and she swipes it away quickly.
“You shouldn’t beat yourself up.” I put my hand gingerly on her arm. “It’s a terrible thing that happened . . . ,” I say, measuring my words. “But she simply wandered off, didn’t she? What could you have done to stop her?” I ask, my eyes searching her face, waiting for her answer.
“I should have said something to her,” Susannah says, her voice dropping to a gravelly pitch.
“What do you mean?”
She starts to laugh, a low, deep, I can’t believe I’m doing this kind of ripple. “You said you wanted to learn more about Henrietta . . . Let me tell you, honey. You’re not going to get the real story down at the library. Or anywhere downtown, for that matter!”
She suddenly stands, with a strength and urgency that confirms my suspicions about her physical condition, and walks to the edge of the terrace, where she places her palms to either side of the ledge and stands there for a moment, the wind blowing her hair as she looks out into the distance. It’s as if she is standing against the railing on a ship, her eyes searching for some lost horizon.
“Bess, we’d had a fight that day,” she finally says, turning to me. “On the day she died. I said things to her . . .” She dabs at the tears falling from her eyes. “We had never argued like that before.”
“But you were just kids,” I say. “Surely it had nothing to do with it.” Right?
“Oh, but I think it did,” she says. “She never would have . . .” She looks at me, her eyes landing on mine just for a moment before she turns away again. “Bess, I know what it is you want to ask me. I can see it all over your face.”
“What?” I say, feigning ignorance. My heart starts to pound in my chest.
“You want to know if I had something to do with it. I know that’s what people say about me. I know it’s part of the reason they hate me so much.”
“No, Susannah. I—”
“Bess,” she says. “I know it’s the truth. I’m sure somebody told you about the rumors as soon as it got out that you were doing this article. Don’t insult me by pretending otherwise.”
I nod.
“The truth is, her death was my fault,” she says, the words making my chest seize as they leave her mouth.
“What?”
“But not in the way people say. More in the way that the things I said before the party affected her state of mind. I’d wanted to hurt her that day, and wouldn’t you know? I did!” She puts a trembling hand to her mouth, closing her eyes as if it pains her to say it. “Words can be vicious, as dangerous as the deadliest weapon.”
The thought rings in my ears, remembering how it felt to listen to the recording that cost me my career. “Believe me, I know,” I say. “But . . . Susannah . . . for her to have died . . .”
She glances at me.
“What did you say?” I ask. “What were you fighting about?”
“I told you those stories the other day,” she says. “About getting revenge, about those women in New York who had threatened my marriage.”
“Yes,” I say.
“Well,” she says. She rests her forehead against her clasped hands. “I left one story out. The one that started it all, I suppose.”
“Susannah,” I say. “I’m not following.”
“Henrietta and I . . . We were arguing about your father-in-law.”
Oh, I should’ve known. My stomach drops, a dread-induced hollowness building inside it. “You said you had suspicions about—”
She cuts me off. “It wasn’t just suspicions!” she says, a ferocity in her voice like I’ve never heard before, and I’m taken aback, that this is the thing out of all of this that gets to her. She shakes her head. “If they had only . . .”
“But you were so young,” I say. “You can’t blame yourself for the things you said when you were just a teenager. And you were in love. If you really believed that something was going on between the two of them, you can’t punish yourself for having stood up for yourself. It’s a horrible coincidence that she happened to have the accident that day, but you can’t blame yourself for it, Susannah. Especially after all this time.”
“But everybody else still does,” she says. “So why shouldn’t I?” Suddenly she spins around and pitches the top half of her body over the railing, as if she’s going to jump.
“Susannah!” I yell, heaving myself toward her, wrapping my arms around her tiny middle. “Susannah, stop,” I say, feeling her shake underneath my arms and then melt against me, like she’s giving in. Or giving up. “You’re okay,” I say, shushing her like she’s my child. “You’re okay.”
“I’m sorry, Bess,” she says, her back against me. “Sometimes
it’s just . . .”
“I know,” I say, wishing to myself that Cindy would suddenly appear. Has she been this far gone all along and I’m just now seeing it, or is she falling apart in front of my eyes?
She lets go and shuffles back to where we were sitting. She moves slowly, like she’s been walking for miles. When she turns to me, her eyes are glassy. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” she says, a dazed look on her face as she leans back against the chair. Her eyes scan the scenery behind me. “Sometimes it’s just . . . sometimes it all comes rushing back. And sometimes it’s just too much.”
Twenty-One
Diane would like us all to have Sunday brunch together at the inn every week after church. That was the way she phrased it. It wasn’t “Would you like to all have brunch together on Sundays?” or a cheery “How would you all like to have brunch together on Sundays?” but, instead, a terse, definitive, Chairman Mao–like proclamation, which she threw down just yesterday morning while Cole and I were in the front yard, planting mums and pansies in the flower beds.
She tit-totted over from her house, where she’d probably been watching us from behind the drapes in her living room, waiting for the moment our defenses were down: I would like us all to have brunch together on Sundays. Cole stood up and wiped his hands on his running shorts, and instead of saying something reasonable (maybe, perhaps, “Sure, Mom, Bess and I will check the calendar and talk about it”), answered, “All right, great! What time were you thinking?”
We started fighting about it the minute Diane disappeared behind her front door. I stomped around to the back of the house and hurled the spade back into the box of gardening tools that Mrs. Miller had left for us and marched into the house, Cole following, letting the screen door slam behind him, telling me I was overreacting and being unreasonable. And maybe it’s true. We have been fighting all week long, over everything, and I can’t say I can explain why, or tell whether it’s justified, except to think that the mood in our house just sucks.
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