A Field of Darkness

by Cornelia Read

  A bronze plaque atop the rock read “Joseph Townsend, 1698,” his birth year in England unknown.

  My own favorite headstone, however, was that of my namesake and great-great-grandmother, Madeline Ludlam Townsend. It sported an uncommonly creepy winged skull, symbolizing “the flight of the soul from mortal man,” according to a gravestone iconography handbook I’d once read, and the inscription was no less horrendously dismal, reading:

  Behold and see as You pass by,

  As You are now, so once was I.

  As I am now, You soon must be.

  Prepare for Death, to follow Me.

  A real ray of sunshine, that Madeline the First.

  “So this is who you’re named after?” asked Ellis.

  “Yup,” I said, scouting the rosebushes for the ones I wanted, walking past The Fairy, Cecile Brunner, Souvenir de Malmaison.

  Baron Girod de l’Ain and Félicité-Perpétue were still showing a last flush of bloom. I picked a quick bouquet.

  “You’re bringing him roses?” said Ellis.

  “You’re just pissed because you don’t have a present for him.”

  “Course I do,” she said. “Me.”

  We caught the 5:11 to the city. As the old diesel pulled wearily away from the station house, the conductor came into the car.

  “Oystuh Bay train, this is the Oystuh Bay train,” he chanted like an auctioneer, “making station stops at LocustValleyGlenCoveGlenStreetSeaCliff-

  GlenHeadGreenvaleRoslynEastWillistonMineolaJamaicaWoodside and Penn Station. Change at Jamaica for Rockaway, Long Beach, Montauk, and Babylon.”

  He punched our slips and stuck them under the clip on the seatback’s rounded maroon shoulder, then swayed down the aisle to the next car.

  I looked out the window and thought about all the times I’d ridden this train with no money for a ticket—every pathetic episode of crying on cue for the conductor, and each heartfelt promise to send a check or money order, later, to the Long Island Railroad.

  Water and trees and people’s backyards flashed by. We jumped off and caught a subway at Woodside.

  Ellis was chatting away but I couldn’t focus long enough to contribute more than an occasional nod or “Really?” I kept getting distracted, reading the long ad-cards posted along the curving edges of the car’s ceiling, over and over.

  “Anal Fissures?” proclaimed one. “Genital Warts? Dr. Suleiman Understands! Fast Laser Outpatient Surgery!”

  And then there was my perennial favorite, the Spanish ad for Roach Motels: Las cucarachas entran, pero no pueden salir!—which had become something of a motto during college: “The roaches go in, but they no can leave.”

  The train squealed around a corner, and after the noise died away Ellis was saying, “. . . time Rizzo came back from the Cape, and finally figured out that mechanic had been breaking things on your car, because he knew he’d get paid in coke?”

  “I mean,” she said, “what were we thinking? Right there on Spring Street, in front of King’s Liquors . . .”

  I smiled at her, nodding. Thought about Lapthorne, wondered whether or not he’d recognize the dying blossoms gripped in my thorn-weary hand . . . whether it had been his elegant fingers that had twined roses exactly like them, red and white, into the tresses of those long-dead girls. I’d have to concentrate, watch his face when I handed them over.

  “That horrible coat you had,” Ellis said, “nasty pile of tweed, so scratchy it looked like you’d stolen it off some passed-out old homeless guy in Ireland . . .”

  “Cruel of you to remember that,” I said, and her answering laugh was drowned out by an eastbound string of red cars, in the buffeting rush of its backwash wind.

  I thought about all the questions I hadn’t had the wit to formulate, or the balls to ask Lapthorne, the night before. Once again I’d been overwhelmed by how pretty he was, how beautiful were all the trappings of my lost heritage. And then, of course, I was stricken by how little hope there was that I might ever earn the slightest of those luxuries back for myself, or prove worthy of their enjoyment, even if I could.

  The subway hurtled downward, into the dark.

  Ellis’s voice, luring me back, “. . . typing up that paper, about ‘My Life, by Somebody Else,’ only you called it . . .”

  The lights went out. Flashed again, once, making the darkness more hollow and complete . . . struggled back on, gaining strength with each flicker.

  “And Mimi,” she was saying, “with that disgusting bird crapping all over her dorm room . . .”

  I thought about Schneider, about how maybe all I had to find out about was the dog tags. Just ask Lapthorne how they’d ended up with the bodies in that field.

  Kenny said so, and Kenny was a pro.

  “. . . claws mutilating that perch. Big-ass white thing,” she went on, “straight out of Baretta.”

  Find that out, I told myself, and then I was off the hook. Piece of goddamn cake. Something even I couldn’t fuck up, because how hard could it be? Just wing it . . . open my mouth and allow one phrase to tumble out, no more than thirty seconds over cocktails, or dinner.

  But I didn’t unclench my fists, except to shift the pathetic bouquet to my as-yet-unpricked palm, until we braked screaming into the nether-belly of Grand Central.

  “Chatty bitch,” said Ellis, standing up as everyone else bolted past us. “What’s the matter? Thinking about Dean?”

  Dean.

  Of whom I was least worthy, beyond everything else I’d never deserve.

  “Yeah,” I lied, dropping my eyes to the scummy floor. “Exactly. That fight we had, right before he left . . .”

  When I looked again she was gone, halfway onto the platform already, so I shoved off after her, catching glimpses of her neat dark head as I climbed a broken escalator, an echoing staircase. Up and up, along tiled hallways and past a thousand yards of beige marble, until we burst out onto the concourse and the crowd thinned, spreading across the expanse beneath the great barrel arch painted with constellations, half the bulbs burned out. And still I didn’t fall into step until just before we reached the stench and clamor of the street.

  “Don’t worry.” She touched my arm. “He’ll call. Probably trying right now, Bonwit giving him no end of shit . . .”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Dean loves you.”

  “Can’t imagine why.”

  She shook her head and laughed again and we began to make our way along the blocks, north and east, north and east, toward the river and the quiet little stretch of East End Avenue fronting on that gem of park containing the mayor’s place.

  I slowed my pace so Ellis could mount the worn limestone stairs to Lapthorne’s entry first, stopping one tread short of the landing so I wouldn’t crowd her.

  Centered on the door’s black gloss was the face of a gilt-bronze lion, big as a headlight.

  Resting my hip against the stair rail, I watched her lift the hoop caught in its snarl-bared teeth. Not to bang the thing, announcing our arrival, just to get it out of the way for a curtsied lipstick-check in the strikeplate’s golden mirror.

  Satisfied, she caught my eye in the reflection and threw me a wink before drawing herself up, tall as she could go. Then she inhaled, threw her shoulders back, and rapped the ring’s heft smartly, twice, against the answering metal.

  As though he’d been standing at the ready, Lapthorne swung the door wide, and I saw how the corners of his eyes crinkled with pleasure at the sight of Ellis. In a clean arc of kiss and compliment, he’d passed her inside, not even shifting his weight.

  So then it was just me, hesitating still, one step shy of the landing—fistful of roses head-down behind my back.

  Now I could see him in full: the pink Brooks Brothers shirt with a couple of buttons missing, the ratty khakis that hung perfectly off his narrow hips, revealing an inch of sockless ankle above each patent-leather tuxedo pump—shoes so old the finish was veined and cracked at the balls of his feet.

  Proffering t
he roses, I stepped forward, presenting a cheek for the expected kiss. He went for my mouth instead, dragging it out for a second, which just about killed me. I had to grip the cast-iron railing to keep from leaning into him.

  When he pulled back, I willed myself to keep my eyes on his face, watching for any reaction to the bouquet.

  Still looking at me, he wrapped his hand around the stems loosely, just above my own grip, letting my fingers slip away beneath before he tightened his own.

  I could still feel the nick of each thorn in my palm, but Lapthorne didn’t flinch, only smiled down at the red and white blooms nodding, heavy, over his hand. He nudged a fingertip beneath one sulky crimson flower, tilting it upwards, then let it sag back against its brethren before lifting them all to his face.

  He closed his eyes as he inhaled the perfume.

  “Magnificent,” he said, raising his head at last. “Thank you so awfully much.”

  Lapthorne and Ellis had gone farther inside, but I’d hesitated before a mirror hung in the dull red front hall. My attention was caught not by my reflection, but by the black spots eating into the glass’s silvery backing. I had no idea I’d ever been in this place before, but I must once have been made to wait, in this exact location, long enough to decide that the dark patch nearest the bottom left-hand corner looked like a tugboat.

  There it was, the stubby little craft plowing through waves, complete with cartoon puff of smoke trailing from its crooked rooftop stack. While I considered the shape, another fragment of memory surfaced—a glimpse of my own earnest little face, reflected in the glass back when I was small enough to have been eye level with the bottom edge of its frame. Then as now, I’d held my breath so I wouldn’t fog the surface.

  Underneath the mirror was a spindly table, originally positioned there for the receipt of calling cards. I opened its single drawer, knowing it would contain two golf tees, a palm-sized bronze medal commemorating Hoover’s inauguration (“Engineer, Scholar, Statesman, Humanist . . .”), and a spent book of matches from the Stork Club.

  Then I had to wonder who the hell had left three-foot-tall me standing alone in a New York City hallway long enough that I not only started looking through drawers, but memorized their contents.

  The only object new to me was a fossilized lipstick, the coral shade of which dated to the cusp of Mayors Lindsay and Beame. I found this thing’s presence offensive, an upset to the natural order, and so dropped it into a handy umbrella stand.

  Just as I started walking toward the doorway Lapthorne and Ellis had gone through, he peeked his head out into the hall.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’m . . . I didn’t think I’d ever been here, but I totally remember . . .” I didn’t know how to finish the thought, so I just shrugged in an attempt to indicate the hallway generally.

  Lapthorne put his hands in his pockets. “Used to be Dodie’s place.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “right . . .”

  Dodie the junkie matriarch, blood connection of our second-cousin-hood.

  He looked sheepish. “She couldn’t keep up . . . taxes, you know? I paid the, ah, fair market—”

  “Did I come here, when I was little?”

  He smiled. “Madeline, you were born two blocks away.”

  “Oh.”

  “Doctors’ Hospital?”

  I nodded, embarrassed. “Well . . . so this is still her stuff?” I said, glancing again at the mirror, its thin gold frame bright against the tomato-soup wall. How many years later, and here I was, out here alone. Waiting.

  “Sure you’re okay?” he asked, sounding genuinely concerned. “Come on in the library . . . have a glass of wine.”

  My cousin was leaning against the doorframe, holding out a hand like I needed help reaching shore.

  “Hey,” he said, “welcome back.”

  “Now, what can I get you? I have the usual complement of the hard stuff, if you don’t want wine. . . .”

  Lapthorne was standing in front of a little copper sink and a bar hidden behind a door full of fake books in the library. Booze masquerading as literature, how too-too perfect.

  “Wine sounds wonderful,” I said. “Whatever you two are having.”

  He reached up to the shelf above his head and plucked down another glass. “I’ve got a nice backstrap of venison, so we could segue this right into dinner.”

  Ellis was holding up an old black-and-white shot in a silver frame. “Is this you, Maddie?” she said, pointing.

  I stepped up to see what she held: the big family shot of Dodie and progeny, on the lawn in front of her house on Centre Island . . . two generations of handsome men and their slender wives, then all the great-grandchildren—shining teenagers in madras jackets or Lilly shifts and the youngest in button shoes and smocked dresses, or gray flannel shorts and Peter Pan collars.

  Lapthorne at thirteen and even me, just above the tip of Ellis’s finger. I was almost a year old and sitting on my mother’s lap, my father standing behind her with a hand gently on her shoulder, both of them beaming. That was when I was still the youngest in the whole family. There was never another portrait of us all together.

  “You can see where they grafted us onto the group,” said Lapthorne. “We were fogged in on Nantucket the day they shot everyone else.”

  I leaned in closer and realized there was indeed a thin line separating Bat, Binty, and their four boys from everyone else, and that a touch of tree branch repeated, just above their heads.

  Binty was looking pissed.

  Lapthorne gave me the glass of wine. “I made up a plate of cheese,” he said, “but I left it in the kitchen, which is of course in the basement. Should we head down and I’ll finish dinner?”

  We followed him down a narrow staircase—the architect having wasted no space or detail on what would have been used exclusively by servants.

  The kitchen was low and wide, with dark beams across the ceiling. Lapthorne set a double-boiler to simmer on an old eight-burner Garland stove. Through French doors at the back, I could see the evening darkening a small garden.

  A sweet fragrance started to float atop the deep scent of meat roasting in the oven.

  “Give this a taste,” said Lapthorne, proffering a spoon coated with clear and deep golden red. “Little bit of port for the venison.”

  Ellis first blew on it, then touched her tongue to the liquid. “Oh my God,” she said, grinning.

  “I think we’re good to go, then,” said Lapthorne. He moved the browned backstrap of deer to a platter and poured his sauce over it, then loaded it into the dumbwaiter. “Why don’t you two head up to the dining room. I’ll send this aloft. . . .”

  When we were out of earshot, she said, “I really want him not to have done it, Madeline. I just think he’s so cool.”

  “It’s not like I want it to be him,” I said. “Not like I even think it, now, after what Kenny said. All I want to know about is the dog tags.”

  “Good woman,” she said.

  We turned to the next set of stairs and went on climbing.

  I took a bite of the venison, which was perfect, the sweet, tangy sauce a magnificent counterpoint. The dining room walls were a soft gray and Lapthorne had lit candles all around, tapers glowing from wall sconces and from the branches of some heavy Georgian sterling numbers on the table.

  How to start? Just say, So those dead chicks . . . you were in jail, but your dog tags weren’t?

  Ellis was no help, she was practically lying in Lapthorne’s lap asking if she could peel him a grape.

  God, I just suck at this.

  Lapthorne kept refilling our glasses, and as I got a little hazy with the wine it all started to seem ridiculous.

  “You look pensive, Madeline,” he said to me, an edge of concern to his voice.

  “Just thinking how nice to sit down for a meal without Bonwit pecking at me,” I said.

  “That man’s a piece of work,” he said, smiling at me. “I remember he told me once that his
daughter had served him her scabs on toast that morning. Said they’d been rather tasty, considering.”

  “Typical,” I said.

  “I love your mother, though . . . one of the few people I ever wanted to emulate on Centre Island.”

  I took a sip of wine.

  “How’s your father these days?” he asked. “Haven’t seen him in years. . . .”

  I explained about him living behind the gas station, and how he thought the KGB was reading his mail, and how strange it was to look so much like him and yet not know him at all.

  “I’m Hamlet Plus—instead of meeting my father’s ghost, I am his ghost. . . .”

  This was met with silence.

  “Sorry . . .” I said. “Don’t mean to get all maudlin.”

  Lapthorne laid his hand over mine. “Not at all. That sounds . . .” he said, “well, that sounds as though it must be really awful. I’m sorry. But you were always cool yourself, Madeline. You knocked me out, even when you were a little kid. I remember asking you once when you were about seven what you wanted to be when you grew up, and you thought about it for a minute and said ‘Myself,’ in this really serious little voice. Never forgotten that.”

  “Not really an aspiration one can fail to achieve,” I said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous . . . look at the rest of the damn family. Utterly bloodless by the time they were twelve, most of them.”

  I laughed.

  “You’re a credit to the race,” he continued, “and God knows to the family at large. It’s a rare occasion I actually get to enjoy my relatives—I should be breaking out champagne.”

  I had a rush of affection for him. Just because it had been so damn long since a member of my own family had been happy to see me, had smiled when I came into a room.

  Here I was, made welcome in this beautiful place—as if I belonged, once again. As if, just maybe, the hubris of my parents and my own failures hadn’t managed to cut me off from home and clan forever.