“Community hysteria doesn’t help at all,” he said in a radio broadcast, right after he informed us that children twelve and under were now barred from public places. Parks and pools were closed, and although the cause of the epidemic was unknown, Dr. Whims warned parents not to let their children drink unprocessed milk or play in the creeks. “Repair your window screens,” he said, “and do everything possible to control flies.” Many of the women in Ruth’s circles, those who had children or grandchildren and means, escaped to their mountain or lake homes. Hickory had a ghost-town feel to it without the laughter of children.
At church that Sunday, Ruth stood up to make an announcement. “Most of you probably remember my former maid Adora Johnson,” she said, and heads bobbed throughout the church in recognition. “Well, Adora’s grandson was one of the first to succumb to this infantile paralysis that’s affecting so many children of lesser means.”
I was starting to detest Ruth for her holier-than-thou attitude, and I lowered my head so no one would see me roll my eyes. Surely by now Ruth had to know that the children of doctors and lawyers were falling victim to polio as quickly as the children of the poor.
“I’m taking up a collection to cover the cost of a headstone for her grandson,” Ruth continued. “Please see me after church if you’d like to contribute.”
* * *
“Thirty-eight dollars,” Ruth said half an hour later when we’d piled into the Cadillac for the ride home. She sat in the front seat next to Henry, counting the bills and coins in her lap. “They can get a nice little headstone for that,” she added. “Perhaps I can get the money to them this week, once the quarantine is lifted. They must be going stir-crazy over there.”
“We could take it over now,” Lucy suggested. “Drop it off on the porch with a note, like I did with the ham?”
“Nicer to do it in person,” Ruth said.
I would run this conversation over in my mind repeatedly in the weeks that followed. If only we’d taken the money to Adora and her family then.
If only.
PART TWO
50
June 15, 1944
Dear Gina,
Lucy is dead. She’s dead and it’s my fault. My hand’s shaking so much as I write this … I hope you can read it. I haven’t been able to stop shaking since it happened. Lucy died right before my eyes and I’ll never get over seeing the horrible terror in her face. That poor girl! Oh, God, Gina, how am I going to live with myself after this??
It was an accident. Henry told me never to use his Buick because the tires were bad, but I thought it would be all right for a short trip. So foolish of me! Lucy and I wound up in the river, water rushing through the windows. It rose so quickly, Gina! When I shut my eyes, I still feel it rising up my body. I was able to get out, but Lucy’s legs were pinned. Maybe if I hadn’t panicked, I could have saved her? I don’t know. All I know is that I’ll never be able to stop thinking about her face as the life left her eyes.
I hardly remember anything that happened after the accident. I was unconscious and when I came to, an ambulance had arrived and I heard the driver say I was in shock. I thought he’d take me to the hospital, but I ended up in the police station. I sat there wrapped in a blanket for what seemed like hours, but it was probably only minutes. I was shivering so hard, my teeth chattered and I bit my tongue. I kept asking if they’d managed to save Lucy. I knew in my heart she was gone, but I kept asking and hoping and … I think I lost my mind for a while, Gina. Even now, I know I’m not thinking straight. Anyway, no one would answer me. I felt as though I were speaking from inside a bubble, I was so numb and dazed. I could hear the policemen talking to each other, but not to me. One of them was that Teddy Wright, the policeman I thought was following me when I first moved to Hickory, remember? He was a friend of Lucy’s and very upset. I felt so cut off from everyone. I didn’t know how I was going to face Henry or Ruth.
When Henry got to the police station, I started sobbing and shaking even harder. He barely glanced at me, then turned away as if I were invisible. Teddy and two other policemen approached him. One of them put his arm around his shoulders, while I sat alone in my wet clothes, trembling and racked with guilt. Then Henry said we were leaving. He was so angry. He walked ahead of me and I followed him out to the car. I was sobbing. I don’t think I’ve stopped crying for more than a few minutes since it happened.
Henry says he doesn’t blame me, but how can he not? Although he hasn’t yet let me talk to his mother, I’m certain she blames me. If it wouldn’t harm the family name, I’m sure she’d find a way for Henry to divorce me. I wish she would. I haven’t been able to find a way myself.
You asked about my plan to void our marriage. Right now, that seems very unimportant. But anyway, my plan failed. Henry made love to me that very night. It was just that once and I have the feeling he never will again, especially not now. But he won’t let me go, Gina. He’ll never let me go, despite everything. Despite the fact that I’m responsible for his sister’s death. I think my only choice now is to try to apply for a job somewhere, quietly, on the sly. Then I’ll move to wherever that job is and begin the two years of living apart that will allow us to get a divorce. The job will have to be far enough from Hickory that word of my location can’t get back to him. I don’t think I should return to Baltimore, so please don’t worry about not having space for me in your new apartment. I can’t bear the thought of bumping into Vincent and his girlfriend, and if he and I were both working in the medical community in Baltimore … I would always be looking for him. Hoping to see him. I don’t know where I’ll go but wherever it is, I’ll have to keep it a secret or Henry will come after me and try to drag me back. Once those two years of separation are up, I’ll try to force him to agree to a divorce. But truth be told, I don’t have the gumption to make this happen right now. Even though I wasn’t hurt physically in the accident, my heart and soul feel dead. I keep seeing Lucy’s face as she died. She was right in front of me and I could do nothing to save her. When I walk around this house, I sense her near me and feel as though I’m losing my mind. She haunts me, Gina. And she hates me.
Yes, I’m speaking metaphorically. (At least about the haunting part. She surely did hate me). She was just a very naïve girl who hadn’t experienced much of life. She’d been raised like a princess, and maybe in time, with more experiences behind her, she would have become a wonderful person. I’m terribly sad that she’ll never have that chance.
Love,
Tess
51
The morning of Lucy’s funeral, Henry told me that Ruth didn’t want me to go. I still hadn’t seen Ruth to tell her how sorry I was. I’d asked Henry several times if I could speak to her—or rather, if she would speak to me—but he seemed determined to keep us apart. Maybe that was for the best. Of course she blamed me for the accident, though probably not as much as I blamed myself.
“You can come downstairs afterward when people are back here at the house,” Henry said as he buttoned his shirt. “I’ll insist she agree to that.”
It would be awkward seeing Ruth for the first time with other people around, but maybe it would be all right. Maybe that would soften her reaction to me.
I was glad that Henry no longer seemed quite so upset with me. When he’d driven me home from the police station, he’d barely been able to contain his anger at me.
“I told you not to use the Buick,” he’d said.
“I know.” I’d run my palms over my damp skirt. “Lucy pleaded with me and I thought it would be all right. She wanted to take the money for the headstone to Adora. She didn’t want to have to take a cab.”
He kept his eyes on the road. “Then why were you near the river?” he asked.
“She had some … I don’t know exactly what it was … a business document she said you wanted her to take to someone on the other side of the river.”
I thought his face paled a bit. I didn’t want him to blame himself.
“It’s my fa
ult.” I reached over to touch the back of his hand on the steering wheel. “I should have just told her no.”
When we got to the house, he told me to go straight upstairs and I did. I sat on the edge of my bed, still in my clammy clothes, and I knew the exact moment Henry told Ruth what happened. I heard her agonized wail and the sobs that followed. Her cries were loud enough to rise up the stairs and through the bedroom door. I held my hands over my ears, choking on my own tears as the reality of the accident washed over me. Lucy was dead, gone forever, her future stolen from her. Nausea came over me and I raced from the bedroom to the bathroom. I was sicker than I’d ever been in my life, and I welcomed the misery. I thought I deserved far worse.
* * *
Once Henry and Ruth left for the funeral, I lay on my bed in my black skirt and white blouse, staring at the ceiling as I imagined the scene at the church. Lucy’s girlfriends would be there, weeping, feeling vulnerable, unable to believe that one of their own could so easily die at the age of twenty. The Ladies of the Homefront would certainly be there as well, and all of the women from Ruth’s various book clubs and the bridge club. Members of the country club would come, I was sure, and many of the townspeople too, despite their anxiety about gathering together while a polio epidemic raged through the area. They would come anyway, loving the Kraft family. Wanting to show their support.
The house felt spooky to me with everyone gone. It was rare for me to be there entirely alone. Even if the family was out, I was always aware of Hattie’s presence, but Hattie was at the church with everyone else after spending the early hours of the morning in the kitchen preparing food for when people came back to the house.
I got up from the bed and left the room, then stood in the eerie silence of the upstairs hall. The door to Lucy’s room was directly in front of me and I stared at it for a moment before crossing the hall and pushing it open. Instantly, I smelled her. I didn’t think it was the scent of her perfume as much as the hair spray she used to hold her dark blond bob in place. The scent was so distinctively Lucy that I let out a little “Oh.” I stood inside the door, looking around the room. The crisply made bed. The lavender wallpaper. The assortment of cosmetics and perfume bottles on the doily that topped her vanity. There were photographs tucked into corners of her vanity mirror and I walked closer to look at them. Most were high school graduation pictures of her girlfriends and I recognized a couple of them. There were two pictures of young men in uniform. But the photograph that grabbed my attention was of Henry standing on the front porch of the house. He stood in the middle of two girls, an arm around each of them. Lucy and Violet. All three of them smiled at the camera. They looked so comfortable with each other. So happy together, and I wondered, as I often had in the last few months, what alliances I had disturbed when I came on the scene.
Staring at that photograph, I had a sudden feeling that someone was standing behind me, watching me. I turned quickly, but no one was there. Yet the feeling was still strong. I felt dizzy and held on to the corner of the vanity.
“Lucy?” I said out loud, feeling crazy. There was no response, of course, yet I still had a strong, almost suffocating, sense of her presence. I quickly left the room, slamming the door hard behind me, and hurried across the hall to Henry’s bedroom. I was shaking by the time I reached the haven of my bed. So silly, I chided myself. My guilt was wreaking havoc on my imagination.
* * *
I must have drifted off because the next thing I knew, car doors were slamming outside. I lay still, barely breathing, listening. Voices downstairs, first two or three, then many, until they formed a sea of sound that hummed in the walls of the bedroom. I got up from the bed and smoothed my white blouse and black skirt. At the dresser, I stared at my pale face. The skin beneath my eyes was purplish and baggy. The little sleep I’d had since the accident had been marred by dreams about Lucy. Dreams about drowning. I looked at my compact and rouge on the top of the dresser. I wouldn’t bother with them. Nothing was going to save my face today. Instead, I tried to run a comb through my tangled hair. I hadn’t styled it since the accident and I had to admit that Ruth had been right when she said I looked like a Gypsy. Today I truly did. I gathered my hair into my hands and twisted it into a bun at the nape of my neck. It was the best I could do for now.
Palms sweating, I made my way down the stairs. The first person I saw as I neared the foyer was Violet, and it wasn’t until I reached the bottom step that I realized she was speaking to Henry, her hand on his arm. Both of them looked in my direction at the same moment. Violet dropped her hand quickly and, with a last glance at Henry, moved away. Henry, his face unreadable, walked toward me.
“Are you sure you want to be down here?” he asked when he reached my side.
“I think I should be.”
He looked reluctant. “Avoid my mother,” he said. “I thought it would be all right, but…” He shook his head. “You can talk to her later, when the guests have gone, but now is not the time to try to speak to her.”
I nodded. “All right.”
Someone called to Henry and he left me standing there alone feeling awkward and vulnerable. I took a deep breath and stepped into the entrance to the living room. I spotted Honor Johnson passing a tray of food from one group of people to another and guessed she was helping Hattie in the kitchen. I saw some of the women from the Ladies of the Homefront, including Mrs. Wilding—who had never gotten back to me about her niece the nurse. I approached them, hoping to find a small circle to fit into.
“Thank you for coming,” I said, as they turned toward me.
Absolute silence greeted me. Each of them stared at me as though I were a stranger. Mrs. Wilding finally spoke.
“Do you think you should be down here, Tess?” she asked.
I straightened my spine. “I cared about Lucy,” I said.
“You weren’t supposed to use that car,” scolded one of the women—I couldn’t recall her name.
I could think of no response, my mind a miserable blank canvas.
“Whatever possessed you to drive a car with rundown old tires?” asked a third woman.
“Excuse me,” I said, stepping away from them. I couldn’t face their coldness any longer, and yet where could I go? I saw many people I knew, however vaguely. Lucy’s girlfriends. Byron Dare and his blond wife, stunning in black. Mayor Finley and his wife, Marjorie. So many of Ruth’s friends. I felt their furtive glances in my direction. Where was Henry? If I was to be down here, I needed him by my side. I happened to glance through the window toward the backyard and spotted him crossing the lawn, moving away from the house.
I walked into the dining room and over to window for a better view of my husband. He’d reached Hattie’s cottage, where Zeke was pointing toward the eaves. Henry stood next to him, looking up, pointing toward the eaves himself, and I guessed they were talking about something that needed repair. Zeke suddenly reached toward Henry, resting his hand on Henry’s shoulder in what looked like a gesture of comfort over Lucy’s death. I felt a bit like a voyeur, witnessing the true nature of their friendship in that moment. It was a friendship that went way, way back and I was both touched by it and envious of it.
I stepped away from the window and saw the faces of the people in the dining room turn from me. I couldn’t stay down here any longer without Henry. I headed toward the foyer, but when I reached the stairs I felt a tug on my skirt and looked down to see Honor’s little girl standing next to me. She carried a good-sized doll in her arms.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.” I smiled at her, then sat down on the next-to-the-bottom step so I was at her level. “What’s your name?” Her name was Jill, I knew, but I would let her tell me.
“Jilly,” she said. “What’s yours?”
“Tess,” I said. “How old are you, Jilly?”
“Four,” she said, holding up four fingers. Her hair was smoothed back into two short thick braids that grazed her shoulders and she wore a little green pinafore over a whit
e blouse.
“That’s a pretty doll,” I said, and Jilly held it in front of her to show me. The doll had eyes that opened and closed, pursed pink lips, and molded blond hair. I wondered what it was like for a colored child to have a white doll. Jilly was not as dark-skinned as her mother, but the doll’s pearly skin was pale in the little girl’s toffee-colored hands. I knew they made colored dolls. I remembered seeing one in a little toy shop in Baltimore when I’d been shopping with Gina sometime before Christmas. That felt like a lifetime ago.
“Does she have a name?” I asked.
Jilly sat down on the step next to me. I could feel her warmth and her wired little-girl energy.
“She don’t have a name,” she said.
“Oh my goodness,” I said. “She needs one, don’t you think? Everybody needs a name.”
Jilly studied the doll, which was almost too big for her to hold on her lap. “This baby don’t need one,” she said.
“Was she a present?”
“Miss Lucy gave her to me.”
I felt my heart contract. For all Lucy’s self-absorption, she’d cared about this family. Sometimes I felt like I’d misunderstood my sister-in-law the same way she’d misunderstood me.
“That was sweet of her,” I said. “I guess Miss Lucy and Mr. Hank grew up with your mama and your uncle Zeke, hmm?”
Jilly looked at me blankly as though she didn’t understand what I was saying. “Miss Lucy’s in heaven now,” she explained. “She’s with Butchie.”
“Oh,” I said. “Yes, she is. I’m sorry Butchie got so sick. I’m sure you miss him.”
The Stolen Marriage Page 22