Lady (37 page)

"Then I heard from Eotis Thorne. He wanted more money, so I sent it to him, but he wanted more, and then more. There was no end to what he wanted. I was deathly afraid Jesse would find out, and do something terrible. You've never seen Jesse's temper, but he had one, believe me. And it was Jesse, you see, who first brought it home to me that you must be told before you stumbled on the truth accidentally. He said I must prepare you for the truth, and when you'd heard it you would understand."

"But I didn't."

"Do you now?"

"Yes -- I think so."

We talked it out, step by step, event by event, and I thought that I did understand. I could see, or thought I saw, it all. How happy she'd been to have Jesse go to the movies with us, she and he holding hands under her pocketbook in the dark while Rudy Vallee sang "Good Night, Sweetheart." The white hand and the black joining in secrecy, in longing.

"It was his ring that I wore, you see, not Edward's. A kind of wedding band. Except no one must know." I looked at her finger, strangely naked without its familiar circling of gold. "I had it buried with Jesse," she explained in answer to my unvoiced question.

Still, there were others.

"Did Jesse ever find out about --"

"Eotis Thome? Yes. It wasn't just me he hated, but Jesse, too. Eon's was a Negro, you see, but with lots of white blood, which made him rejected by his own people. He could have passed for white, a sort of half-breed-very light skin and freckles, and as sometimes happens in blacks, red hair. You saw him several times when he came to threaten me."

"
Eotis Thorne was the red-headed man?
"

"Somehow I thought you knew. He never used the
E
, but called himself Otis Thompson Thorne. His initials were O.T.T. He was your Mr. Ott. Jesse shot him."

Through the rest of the summer the tale absorbed all my waking thoughts. I could think of nothing else. As the story had been related to me at Lamentation, my mind had run on parallel tracks, so to speak, and I realized how at variance with the true facts were those of Ruthie Sparrow's oft-repeated version. I went over it all again and again, sifting each kernel. But of the true facts there seemed only one important one. Lady and Jesse had loved each other. The simple truth was all that was required. She had loved him. He had loved her. It did not matter what others might have thought, whatever labels might have been attached to the relationship. All that really mattered was that they had loved each other.

Even I, who knew nothing of love -- had scarcely experienced it -- could see that it was this one simple fact that had sustained Lady through the time I had known her, and even before that. Listening to her speak of those years, I saw how difficult it had been from the beginning. And with what pains the whole-charade, the hoax, had kept the town unaware. Even I could see that, after Edward's death, it was a prospect from which neither could retreat; yet how was it to be accomplished? Lady's weakness, if she had one, had been that she was unable to give up what she had attained to, the Harleigh money and property and the things it might provide. She wanted to be neither poor nor alone. But, the disposition of the property and money being so arranged, she was required to live in Pequot Landing, in the brick house on the Green. Jesse's coming there seemed the perfect answer. Why, we had wondered for so long, had a man like him been content with being a houseman? His content had come from elsewhere. Having wanted to be a doctor and take care of many, he had been happy taking care of one. Everything he'd had, he'd given to make that one person happy, and it had been enough for him.

The key, of course, had been Elthea, who, loving them both, had been willing to be a party to the deception. For under no circumstances could the two have lived alone in the house. They arranged all of it -- but not without difficulty -- not to be discovered; that was the thing, never to be discovered.

"It was not done simply," Lady had said. "We paid a terrible price. He did, and I did." Here her calm expression had slightly altered, her tone as well, and it seemed to me that perhaps there was something more than the apparent price that had been paid. Something to do with Edward? Her guilt? The shrine on the gate-leg table? I could not fathom it, yet it was there. In that final moment of revelation concerning Ott, she had spoken with such candor, and then vehemence. I believed her utterly, yet still I was left with the feeling she was withholding one last piece of the story, something that had gone unsaid.

"It's not easy to pretend," she had explained. "For a lifetime. It is a wearisome burden, pretending. Playing a game, acting a part -- for others, not yourself. To make it easier for them, not you. It was all a masquerade."

I recalled our talk in the summerhouse, when she had spoken of the differences between things as they are and things as they seemed. "We all wear other faces, it's true. The good are not nearly so good, and as for the bad, I'm sure they're much worse than people think." And so she had thought of herself, for so many years. I would not have liked to carry such a burden. "Extraordinary," she had said, removing the Halloween child's disguise, "what a mask may do for one."

I wondered where she had gotten the strength to stand up to the rigors of leading a double life, and the danger of revelation in a small town such as Pequot Landing. Yet, until Dora had taken to spying in the carriage house, it had been accomplished. Poor Dumb Dora! If she could know what pain she'd caused.

But for me so much had become clear; now I comprehended Lady's guilt, her tears, her talking to herself, her vigils at the gravesite, at the living-room shrine. Small wonder she saw the ghost of Edward Harleigh wherever she looked, in whatever dark corner she might peer. A widow, living unmarried with another man, her black servant.

"It was the walks, mainly," she had said, her eyes growing misty. "That we could never go anywhere in public together, never be seen as a couple, except out driving. That was why you were always asked to take me around the Green, because he could not. I used to imagine what it would be like to be with him, walking, and that Mrs. Sparrow wouldn't pay any attention to us, that we could be just like other people, that what we had done with our happy lives wouldn't matter to people who had made their lives unhappy.

"He was all my hope, you see. In the nights I couldn't wait for the sun to come up, to see his face, and in the day I couldn't wait for it to be night, when I could hold him." She paused, then finished: "There was nothing I wouldn't have done for him. Nothing. Nothing I
didn't
do. Nothing."

And nothing he hadn't done for her. I thought again of Eotis Thorne, my Mr. Ott, who had threatened their existence, and whom Jesse had done away with. Lady had told me how he had removed the body to the cellar on that Halloween night, and then put on the coat and hat, and taken the streetcar, as a decoy, in case anyone -- like me -- had seen him arrive. Fear of discovery was what had prompted Lady's trip the following summer to Virginia Beach. They had gone to Memphis, where discreet inquiries were made to learn if Thome's trips to Pequot were known. They were not, nor had he been even missed. But still Lady had not revealed to me of the final disposition of the
corpus delicti
.

I thought I understood the psychology behind the shrine on the gate-leg table. As Miss Berry had pointed out, the workings of Lady's mind were indeed elaborate, and for her the shrine was a form of self-punishment, some unfathomable need to be constantly reminded of what she was doing, and what would happen if discovery came.

But for my remaining weeks at home that autumn her earlier words seemed to hang in my inner memory: ". . . people who had made their lives unhappy . . ." That, and "our happy lives . . ."

Everything else seemed irrelevant.

Meanwhile, Hitler's panzers marched into Poland, and the world, our town, and all our lives became different. It was another beginning, or another ending; I could not tell which, for I was not -- none of us were -- aware of the vast changes that were coming. For me the measure of my life seemed only the distance across the Green from our house to Lady's, and it was there that it seemed the changes were most vividly drawn. As I grew in height, our dwelling, always crowded, seemed to shrink, until in fact I could reach to the ceiling when I stood on tiptoe, and inch by inch the yardstick marks on the kitchen door jamb crept swiftly upward toward the lintel.

And as its size diminished, the house emptied. Nonnie had already gone, and myself. Lew had graduated from high school the previous June and found a job in Mystic working for a lobster fisherman. Harry was now in senior high and employed nights at the Sunbeam. This left only Aggie and Kerney at home. Ag was a junior at Thomas Hooker High when I was a sophomore at Blankenschip, and Kerney celebrated his tenth birthday that winter. Nancy began her sixth year with us, and she was the one constant factor on the premises, never changing, never different, never anything but Nancy. Ma might have retired, but she had been at the Sunbeam so long it had become a way of life for her, and she was reluctant to give up her position because we still needed the money. If Nonnie had never managed to lay by enough to put a cow in our shed, at least we now had a secondhand Studebaker in the garage, but there still were our college educations to be thought about.

During my sophomore year, I met a girl at a seminary near Blankenschip, and found I was spending more vacation time in New Hampshire. I believed myself in love, but this was short-lived after Dottie Frame moved to town. Dottie, beautiful, bewitching, auburn-haired, became the belle of Pequot Landing, and she had the boys falling all over themselves, myself included. I quickly switched affections and time schedules and now spent more holidays in Pequot than I had at school. None of this was lost on Lady, who watched my courting of the dazzling Dottie with no comment It was a feverish four months, and there was a zealous exchange of letters (I labored over mine to her while my marks dropped; hers were bright and breezy, and I knew they had cost her no trouble) while I panted in expectation of the next holiday which would see me back on the Green again.

Across the way, I would notice each time I returned how strangely denuded Lady's house looked in its setting, with the old twin elms gone from in front, and two new trees providing little to make up for the damage from the hurricane. Between dates with Dottie Frame I managed to spend as much time as I could over at Lady's, but my periods away at school were sufficient to reveal the extent of the changes, in both the house and the mistress.

Two things were obvious. One, that for all those years it had been Jesse's and FJthea's hands who had kept up the luster of the house, and with their going that luster had dimmed. Two, Lady needed someone to replace them; but no amount of urging seemed to change her mind. It was as though, with the Griffins gone, she was unwilling to accept the presence of some stranger, nor would she suffer the adjustments this would have required her making.

She had another accident, one that, though we did not know it then, proved the beginning of her early decline into ill health, and eventually her death. She'd gone shopping upstreet and the heel of her rubber boot had caught in the escalator in a department store, and she fell. There were no fractures, but her old ankle injury kicked up and she was incapacitated, in addition to which she suffered painful bruises over a good deal of her body. When Dr. Brainard examined her -- it had been some time since she had submitted to an examination of any kind -- the good German Strasser blood was found to be lacking in red cells, and treatments were instituted to correct this deficiency. She got out the cane again. When X-rays were taken, it was discovered that the fall had put her lower back out of alignment, and she was required to wear a brace. When I went to her house, I would find her still cheerful, though she walked more slowly, and it required little effort for her to get out of breath; the slightest exertion tired her.

Worse was to come; a painful series of blood transfusions, a cast, hospitals, and the gradual wearing down of the entire machinery. Nobody knew at that time what lay ahead, but she already entered on the slow downward curve that would eventually see her buried in the churchyard beside Edward. Yet, until the time of Pearl Harbor, we felt she was managing well enough, except in the matter of household help.

While her ankle mended and she wore her back brace, it was necessary for her to be looked after. Rabbit Hornaday still made himself available doing odd chores for her, but more hands were needed. The parade began. For endless months the house on the Green saw a doleful succession of hired girls, maids, housekeepers, and practical nurses. None sufficed for Mrs. Adelaide Harleigh; one by one they arrived, and one by one they departed, with hard feelings on both sides, and the problem continued until Miss Berry once again came to the rescue. But Miss Berry was herself not in the best of health, and the search continued for someone to take over the heavier household work.

One apparent answer to the problem was the recalling of Elthea Griffin from Barbados. This, however, proved impossible. First, since her return to the island it had become her arduous task to take charge of her aged and sickly father, who required close and constant attention. Second, Lady adamantly refused even to hint in her letters that Elthea might be needed. It was not a matter of pride, but of consideration. Elthea, well advanced in years, had already performed a long term of service; it would be selfish to ask her now to take up her old duties. All of us were forbidden burdening her with tales of Lady's unfortunate turn of events. Against our better judgment the news remained undisclosed and Elthea continued caring for her father, while we cast about elsewhere for rescue.

The solution was, like most, a simple one, and I must confess it was not mine, but Ag's. This was in the late autumn of 1941, scant weeks before Pearl Harbor. Giving up serving tables at the Red Fox Café, Helen Zelinski came to the brick house across the Green, and she was the perfect answer.