Keeping Victoria's Secret (6 page)

Peeking through the faded kitchen curtains,
she saw no lights on above the garage. Jack was either sleeping in,
or he’d started work early. After breakfast, she’d find him and
insist they talk this out.

Cup in hand, Vicky explored the first floor.
I can’t wait to remodel this room, she thought stepping into the
kitchen, which ran the entire width of the house along the rear.
Wide doorways on either side of the large fieldstone fireplace led
into dining and living rooms. In front of this fireplace was a
large scarred oak table. The two front rooms also had smaller
fireplaces. All across the front and wrapping around one side was a
wide porch. In back, a smaller porch was on the left rear and
beside this, a small room opening onto both kitchen and rear porch.
Her exploration ended here.

This’ll be a perfect place to work mornings.
Obviously, the room had once been used as an office. With windows
on three sides, it had a lot of natural light. A roll top desk
dominated one wall and an oak bookcase nearly filled the inside
wall. Long ago, the sunroom must have been designated the clutter
catchall. Sandwiched in between desk and bookshelf were cardboard
boxes, small pieces of furniture, lamps, and discarded items, too
good apparently, to take to the dump. The morning sun streamed in,
revealing years of accumulated dust. She resolved to spend the day
cleaning her new office.

After she showered, Vicky returned to the
messy sunroom. In the kitchen, she’d found a damp cloth and began
dusting the furniture. Opening a few of the desk drawers, she found
only pencil stubs and rusty paper clips. As the sun rose and filled
the room with its warmth, she realized she needed to change into
something cooler.

Back upstairs, she shed her sweater and
jeans, choosing instead a pair of denim shorts and sleeveless top.
Her hair was nearly dry and she started to pull it back into a bun,
then looking in the mirror changed her mind and let it fall loose.
She liked her auburn hair. It was very thick with golden
highlights. I’ll need to find a hairdresser and get my hair styled.
Mrs. Sweeney will know a good place.

Downstairs, she tracked down a broom and
dustpan and went to work. Opening the windows, she let fresh air
in. Dragging boxes, lamps and all of the miscellaneous items
accumulated over who knew how many years, onto the porch. She felt
as though she were finally accomplishing something. At last, the
only two pieces remaining were the desk and bookshelf. These she
couldn’t move herself. Briefly considering asking Jack to help with
this, she decided against it. I’m not going to ask him for
anything. He probably wouldn’t help me anyway.

Next, she emptied every one of the desk
drawers and all the nooks under the roll top of the desk. It was
amazing how many little shelves, doors, and drawers there were and
it took some time before it all was cleaned out and dusted. After
searching the kitchen and closets for furniture polish, she added
that to her shopping list.

Then she dragged a chair from the kitchen and
sat before the bookshelf. It was filled with a hodgepodge of books
and papers. There were some ancient dictionaries and a couple of
King James Bibles. Yellowing government leaflets on agriculture and
sales ads for farm equipment were tucked between larger volumes.
She made a pile of the old leaflets and items which could be
discarded and put other things of value to one side.

Three shelves empty, two more to go. Wedged
between stacks of keepers and piles of trash, it occurred to her
that some of these books weren’t put there by Uncle Charley or
Jack. Jack probably reads nothing except what he needs to know to
grow apples. Tucked in at the very end of a middle shelf she found
a worn copy of Little Women. Curious she drew the old volume out
and opened it. What she saw caused a quick intake of breath and
rush of emotion.

To My Dear Daughter

Victoria A. Willet

Mother

Christmas 1939

This book was a gift to Nanna. Her
grandmother must have been just twelve or thirteen. She sat for a
moment her eyes misting, remembering her. Poor Nanna had such a
difficult life. She’d lost Grandpa Joe to a heart attack before he
was sixty years old. Her only daughter and son-in-law had been
killed in a car accident just after Christmas ten years ago. She
fought back tears, thinking of her mother and father, killed in a
fifty-car pile-up on route 80 in Pennsylvania. A freak snow squall
blowing in from the Great Lakes caused a white out and iced
roadways within minutes. I don’t even remember where they were
going.

Then, it had been just she and Nanna,
comforting and leaning on one another. Nanna sold Vicky’s parent’s
large house and moved them both into an apartment. A house and yard
was just too much for her to handle. Life moved along, grief fading
over the years, until Nanna began to lose her memory and her
judgment. Finally afraid to leave her alone at all, she dropped out
of her community college and devoted more time to caring for the
older woman. That was when she began to write seriously. It was
something she could do to earn money while home in the apartment
with Nanna. It was also her only escape from a very lonely
existence.

She hadn’t been aware of this earlier
marriage, a tragic chapter of her grandmother’s life. Determined to
learn all she could, she decided to look through the entire house,
from attic to cellar, and find any other remnants of her Nanna’s
life in Pippen’s Grove. Blinking away tears, she reverently placed
Little Women back on the shelf. Removing her glasses, she wiped her
eyes.

Startled by squishing footfalls on the porch
steps her thoughts were interrupted. Jack stormed through the porch
door. Calmly she looked down and saw the reason for the odd
squashing sounds as Jack stormed in, trailing rivulets of muddy
water. A backpack over one shoulder and a fishing rod in his hand,
he glared at her, water dripping and pooling at his feet.

Standing angrily over her, he looked at all
the junk she’d dragged onto the porch disapprovingly. “What the
hell’s all this?” he asked gesturing at the mess. A muddy brown
puddle pooled around him and rapidly spread.

“I’m cleaning,” she said, turning back to the
bookcase.

Jack sighed heavily. “We need to talk
Victoria.”

“Yes,” she said, swiveling around to look at
him again.

He stood, fishing pole and pack in hand.

“Fishing?”

“No, I just carry this rod around with me
everywhere I go,” he shot back sarcastically. The water crept from
the puddle, a small stream snaking its way down hill towards the
screen door.

“I see.” Coolly she watched the brown water
creep across the floor, determined not to start an argument. “Catch
anything?”

“Listen, we need to talk.”

“Yes, we do.” She agreed again, turning back
to the shelf and removing another book, wiping the spine with her
damp cloth. Studiously, she ignored his glowering silence and
watched as he set down his fishing gear and dropped the bag beside
him, spraying brown droplets across the floor.

Jaws clenched, Jack faced her with feet set
apart, fists balled at his side, and began his rehearsed speech.
“Okay, I know Fred Douglas thought he was doing the right thing,
but I won’t be relegated to some sort of sharecropper on this
place. The bottom line is I won’t take forty percent for working my
ass off. It wouldn’t amount to much more than Uncle Charley’s
peanuts. If you have a problem with that, I’ll hit the road. I have
other places I can go and other places I can work. Do you
understand?” His menacing dark eyes glared at her.

Vicky turned and looked at him directly.
Reaching up with one hand she brushed back a lock of hair that had
fallen across her forehead. “All right. That’s fine with me.” She
smiled at him and returned to her dusting.

He stared at her, eager for an argument. “I
don’t think you understand me. I will not be an employee or some
flunky on this farm. For damn sure, I’m not going to come to you
with my hat in my hand every time I need to buy something or make a
decision.” He looked at her pretty auburn hair and down at her long
bare legs. Her features were small and delicate, nose perfectly
straight and lips parted revealing very white even teeth.

“I understand perfectly. You do the work and
make the decisions; you buy or sell whatever, as you see fit, and
keep all the profits. I’ll pay the taxes and basic expenses. I just
want to live here, in Nanna’s house. What you’re asking is all
right with me.”

Their eyes locked for a beat, before he
cleared his throat and spoke. “What? What’s all right?”

“What you’re saying. I totally agree with
you. It’s not fair that you do all the work here and not fair that
you put in all those years while your uncle was taking
advantage.

“Do you mean that, or are you messing with
me?”

She got to her feet, brushed herself off, and
took a couple of steps toward him. “Yes, of course I mean it. I
wouldn’t joke around about something as important as this. I have
another suggestion. I’d like you to take responsibility for all the
farming. I know nothing about that stuff. You take care of
everything and keep the money. I don’t want it. All I ask is that
you let me do what I want with the house. It was my grandmother’s
home and I want to live here. I want to take care of it, in her
memory. You can have everything else, okay?”

Mouth gaping, he was at a loss for words. He
blinked, swallowed, and stared at the beautiful girl before him.
Her auburn hair shone with golden highlights, and she wore no
jewelry, no makeup and needed none.

He shook his head, and replied, his speech
halting, “Well then, I’m glad you see things my way.” Clumsily, he
reached for his fishing rod and left, shoes squishing with each
step.

“Here, you forgot this.” Vicky picked up his
bag and as she did, the thick paperback volume slid out.

He saw her surprise as she read the title,
The Complete Collection of Poems by William Butler Yeats, before he
angrily snatched it up and jammed it into the bag. “We’ll talk
tomorrow,” he growled over his shoulder.

Jack strode quickly across the yard behind
the garage where he had a big Adirondack chair on the lawn. He
collapsed into it emotionally exhausted. What just happened?
Looking back at the house there was no sign of Victoria. She was
gone.

The vision of Vicky with hair falling across
her shoulders, bare legs, and bewitching eyes haunted him. How did
she morph from that plain frump into something so beautiful? Were
the Irish Fairies playing tricks with his mind?

An amusing thought occurred to him. Irish
mythology held that goddesses could transform themselves into some
plain ordinary creatures like fish or birds, and then back at will,
into ghostly beings of great beauty. Jack pulled the paperback from
his bag and found the page he wanted and began reading a favorite
poem. As he read, his clothes began to dry in the morning
breeze.

The Song Of Wandering Aengus

I WENT out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And some one called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck til time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

Gwendolyn shivered with fright as the Captain
grabbed her roughly by the arm. “Stay close by me and you will be
taken for one of my crew,” he muttered into her ear. Disguised in
men’s clothing with her titian hair hidden under a wide brimmed
hat, he forced her from the longboat into the salty shallows and
dragged her onto the beach.

Struggling to match his long strides through
the sand, she looked back over her shoulder at the three tall ships
anchored in the bay. On the beach was a riotous throng of laughing
buccaneers passing bottles of rum and terrified women captives back
and forth. Bales and boxes of plunder were handed quickly up a long
line of men from the boats. For now, she was this mad man’s
prisoner and had no choice but to do as he demanded. She trembled
with fear. The fact that she’d not yet been physically molested by
the pirate captain was her sole consolation.

From “Caribbean Fire”, by Tori Baxter

Victoria leaned back and peered at her
computer screen imagining the pirates and their captives on the
beach engaged in something resembling a wild frat party. Tapping
her finger, she visualized the scene. Men would yell commands in
French, English, Portuguese, or Spanish. From different stations in
life, they’d be in a variety of dress, or state of undress. She
laughed as she thought it might resemble the bar scene from Star
Wars. Should some of the women be carried off with bodices torn and
breasts exposed? Perhaps.

Her cell phone chimed and recognizing the
number, she flipped it open. “Hello, Dr. Sweeny. How are you?”

“Very well, thank you. I called to let you
know Elvira has collected those photos and keepsakes from the days
when young Victoria lived in Pippen’s Grove. Would it be convenient
for me to bring my wife by the house today?”