Shorecliff (16 page)

In the afternoon we went to visit Barnavelt. All eleven cousins stuck together that day, and Lorelei remained with us. Condor had never received such a large visitation. Soon after we arrived, though, we switched tactics and went to the shore—we were feeling restless and uncertain. It was one of Lorelei’s only appearances on the beach. She wasn’t wearing a bathing suit, but she picked up her skirt and dabbled in the shallows with Pamela and me while Tom cavorted farther out to show off for her.

Dinner was a reenactment of the previous night’s meal. My father asked us for a report of the day’s events, and in the halting summaries we gave him, the fun and exuberance drained out of our activities, making us seem like colorless, uninteresting children. Other than this alarming loss of personality, we got through the meal unscathed, and eventually Aunt Rose nodded once again at whoever was on kitchen patrol and said, “Not tonight, you two. Go on upstairs.”

It was later that night, when it was dark outside and we were retiring for bed, that my father showed his powers of destruction. He and my mother had ended up in the kitchen alone. I was with them for a while—it would have been a cozy family scene had different actors been playing the parts—but after I had suffered for fifteen minutes, they sent me to bed.

It must be obvious by now that I spent half my time at Shorecliff in shameless eavesdropping. When I left the kitchen, I did not trot straight upstairs but instead lingered in the rarely used morning room adjacent to the kitchen. Tucked into the shadows and the dust, one could hear perfectly what was said in the kitchen. I wasn’t sure what I was listening for, perhaps a clue to my parents’ relationship, but I stood there, pressed against the wall, feeling the rapidly beating heart that spying invariably produces, even before anything has been discovered.

“Well,” my father said. “Richard seems to have been staying out of trouble pretty well.”

“He adores it here. Being with his cousins has done wonders for him,” my mother replied—ever loyal.

“Yes, apparently he’s been enjoying the summer, though I wonder what influence those children can have on him. You know what I think of the Ybarras.”

“They’re good children, all of them, Richard. You’ve seen for yourself.”

“I’ve seen the look in Francesca’s eye, that’s what I’ve seen. Cedric and Frank told me about her incident with Charlie Wight. That boy is no better, it would seem, though I’m sure she dragged him along.”

As my father said this I glanced at the doorway to the parlor and through that into the main entryway of Shorecliff, and I saw Francesca coming down the stairs. She walked noiselessly to the morning room where I was standing, acknowledging what I was doing with a mere lift of the head, and then froze when she heard my father’s voice. I assumed she had come down for a glass of water, or perhaps to see if the coast was clear for a late-night swim—one never knew with her. But she had not expected my parents to be on the ground floor. It was uncanny that she arrived directly before my father revealed the reason he had come up to Shorecliff, thus ensuring that she heard his story from beginning to end. Coincidence can be very cruel.

“Caroline, it’s about the Ybarra family, or what’s left of it, that I wanted to talk to you,” he said. “I came up here to see you, of course, but also because I’ve been hearing ugly rumors about Loretta.”

“Rumors?” echoed my mother, instantly on the alert. She had her fair share of Hatfield family pride, and her battle blood rose whenever someone hinted at an insult to the tribe.

“Yes, rumors. The most disturbing part is that I’ve heard them from my own clients. I was mortified, as you can imagine, though naturally the most important thing is to save Loretta.”

“Well, what are the rumors?” My mother’s voice was hard.

“It’s difficult to say this, but the gist of it is that she’s become utterly brazen in her affairs. We’ve always known she was promiscuous—look at her marriage, for God’s sake. And it’s been no secret to her family that she has the tendencies of a nymphomaniac—”

“If by ‘her family’ you mean her children, they certainly are not aware.”

This made me look at Francesca, whose connection with Loretta I had almost forgotten in my eagerness to memorize every word I didn’t recognize for later research in my dictionary. The definition for “nymphomaniac” was unexpectedly frank: “a person obsessed with sexual relations.” Afterward I was never able to think of my Aunt Loretta without remembering that word.

One glance at Francesca, however, drove all vocabulary questions out of my head. She wasn’t trying to hide herself. She was standing in the doorway to the parlor, and I’m sure if my parents had craned their heads they could have seen her. Her hands clutched the doorframe on either side of her, and her coquettish little nightie, pale blue with lace around the neck and ruffles on the shoulders, barely reached mid-thigh. With her black curls tumbling loose, she looked like a seductress herself, but her face wore an expression of such heartbreaking shock that it destroyed any suggestion of sexuality. Francesca occasionally seemed much older than twenty-one, mature in her manners, her knowledge, her language. But when she heard of her mother’s habits, her face showed the innocence of a seven-year-old whose world has been demolished, and I, looking on from my corner, felt as if I were witnessing something no one should be allowed to see.

Nor did the horror stop there. My father had merely been laying the groundwork for his story. “In any event,” he went on, “whether or not her children knew, the rest of us did, and we were prepared to accept her behavior, or at least resign ourselves to it, as long as she remained discreet.”

“Your method of resigning yourself was to forbid me to see her in New York,” my mother interrupted.

“Caroline, that is not the point. I didn’t want to cut you off from your own sister, but we are not a rich family, and my business is sensitive to reputation. In any case, Mr. Karlevich—you remember him, the man with the fraud case against his uncle—told me a few days ago that someone had mentioned Loretta to him in frankly revolting terms. As he related them to me, this other man’s words were ‘that slut Loretta Ybarra, apparently an in-law of Mr. Killing’s.’ You can imagine my dismay.”

There was a pause. My mother didn’t say anything. Francesca had jerked her head back at the word “slut,” so I knew it was important. Tears began to roll down her cheeks, but she kept her head thrown back with her neck rigid, so that it looked oddly as if she were bound to the doorframe, her hands clutching the wooden posts. She was waiting for more, and it came.

“I don’t know what Loretta wants or what she’s thinking when she gets herself into these situations, but it seems she’s not only involved herself with several different prominent men, she’s done it publicly. If she’d set out to become the town harlot, she couldn’t have done a better job. And I can’t have my practice suffering from this woman’s behavior. Really, Caroline, whether or not she’s your sister, it’s little better than prostitution.”

“That’s enough, Richard!” my mother said, and from the way she said it I knew she was crying. Apparently she hadn’t known the extent to which Loretta’s passions ruled her life.

“If she’s acting this way to support her children, surely she knows that we would gladly lend her money rather than see her throw herself and her family away in this manner. In any case, it’s time you all got her in hand. If she keeps it up—”

“Stop, Richard! I’ve heard what you had to say.”

I dared another glance at Francesca. My position had become intolerably embarrassing, but since Francesca was blocking my one avenue of escape, I could do nothing except cower in my corner, trying not to look at her too often and striving both to hear and not to hear the conversation in the kitchen. By this time Francesca was crying in the stifled way that causes one’s face to swell up and become bright red. She kept half bending over, as if she were being attacked by bouts of nausea—maybe she was.

What made it so unbearable was that Francesca had always adored her mother. Her conversation was sprinkled with constant references to Loretta: she could learn to speak a language fluently in two months; she had turned heads all over Europe; she wasn’t afraid to stand up to anybody. Francesca modeled much of her arrogance and wildness on what she believed her mother’s behavior to be, but whereas Francesca’s unruliness was rooted in her innocence, Loretta’s had been born of experience and cynicism and God knows what else. As I watched Francesca in the doorway, it seemed as if a great weight descended on her, and I imagined it to be not disgust with her mother but rather an overwhelming helplessness, for nothing now could save Loretta from humiliation.

My parents’ conversation did not last much longer. Francesca’s sobs became audible, and my mother, hearing them, let out a gasp and rushed to her. In her worry that Francesca had overheard the conversation, she didn’t notice me in the corner, and when they found me later it didn’t matter anymore. Francesca became hysterical when my mother wrapped her arms around her. My father came to the doorway of the kitchen and looked at the two of them huddled on the floor. It was one of the few times I’ve seen a look resembling remorse on his face. After a moment he turned around, and I heard the screen door of the kitchen slam shut. He had gone outside to escape.

Aunt Margery heard the commotion soon enough, and within a few minutes the first floor was swarming with so many relatives that Francesca suddenly rose like a missile from her heap on the floor, shrieked wordlessly, and flew up the stairs. The children wandered from room to room, weaving in and out among the adults and asking what had happened. My mother refused to tell them, but at the same time she needed to let the aunts and uncles know of Loretta’s disgrace. For a few minutes there was an impasse. Then Tom and Philip caught sight of me. They knew my talents as an eavesdropper, and they quickly realized that I knew all there was to know. I was hustled upstairs, followed by a pack of cousins.

Yet after they had placed me on Philip’s bed, when I saw him and Cordelia gazing at me, thirsting for knowledge, I refused to say anything. “Ask Francesca!” I hiccupped, nearly crying myself and wrapping my arms over my face so I wouldn’t have to see them anymore. “I won’t tell you. Ask Francesca.” Though I didn’t understand fully what had happened with Aunt Loretta, I had seen Francesca’s reaction, and I had no intention of witnessing a repeat performance from her siblings.

At first Francesca refused to speak to anyone, but after an hour she let Philip into her room. In any case, before the night was over everyone knew the secret. It was inevitable in a house filled with so many loud talkers. Aunt Margery soon worked herself into one of her semi-hysterical states, and her exclamations, combined with Aunt Rose’s booming tirades, broadcast Loretta’s scandal through the house.

I might as well set the record straight now regarding Loretta’s activities. My mother had a long talk with her at the end of that summer, and Loretta told her the story of her disgrace. No one except my father questioned her confession. She had never, in fact, gone around with more than one man at once, and only one had brought her into the public eye. Unfortunately he was a notorious celebrity, a forty-year-old bachelor named Joel Ambersen, known for his conquests of women, his twin penchants for extravagant clothing and exotic animals, and his endless funds. Loretta, once connected to him, was helpless against the flood of gossip. I don’t believe she was such a scarlet woman as the press and society circles painted her. No one could question her fondness for men, but it was her equal fondness for glamour and excitement that struck the finishing blow. Loretta could never resist a man who lived on the edge, and this particular tycoon, the heir to his father’s hard-earned millions, had lived with ostentatious recklessness since he was eighteen. So people laughed and sneered at Loretta and marveled at what she would do for money. That was part of what Francesca resented. I remember her crying at one point that night, “She wouldn’t do it for money! She doesn’t care about money!” And she was right—Loretta acted only out of love, though she loved the thrill of passion as much as the man himself.

The worst part was that it soon became clear, from snippets we read in week-old gossip columns, that Loretta’s millionaire had thought of her as no more than a passing indulgence. There were claims that Loretta had called the scorn of society upon herself by trying to win her lover back when he had obviously left her. Rumors flew that she had stood in the rain on his street corner, that she had screamed at him and his new date in a restaurant, that she had offered herself again and again and been rejected. Who could hear such stories about her mother and not feel that her touchstone had been unveiled and derided as a sham?

When Philip heard the news he didn’t say anything informative. I was lurking in the corridor when he came out of Francesca’s bedroom, and I knew that he knew, but his eyes passed over me as if barely registering my existence, and he said, “If anyone wants to know where I am, I’ve gone for a walk.” Then he went down the stairs and out the front door. It was after midnight, but no one cared about rules that night.

I never found out what Philip thought about the whole thing. As far as I knew, he never discussed it with anyone, not even Tom. I suspect, however, that his mental life saved him from the full blow of his family coming to pieces. Francesca, after all, had patterned her life on her mother’s—Philip had always turned away from it. Now he simply averted his face yet further. Cordelia’s reaction showed itself only later, but from the first, Delia Robierre mourned with her. So did we all.

As for Francesca, after my father’s revelation her lightheartedness abandoned her. Maybe she had been trying to live the romantic dream she had of her mother’s life, and now, equipped with her new knowledge, every jokingly wanton move seemed like a step toward her mother’s fate. Maybe she was overcome with self-loathing at the possibility that she had been living off money raised by her mother’s affairs. Whatever the reason, Francesca’s fire was smothered in a stroke by my father’s words, and all that remained were its smoldering, angry coals. The extent to which we, her cousins, relied on Francesca’s energy, the extent to which we reveled in her mischief, her defiance, her throaty laugh, we learned only after we had been deprived of them and given her ghost.