Tea Cups & Tiger Claws (11 page)

Dorthea
stood motionless and tried to think of an answer. After a false start and some throat clearing, she gave up and shuffled toward the door.

“
Don’t forget your handbag filled with all that money,” said Ermel, as she followed Dorthea to the door and handed it to her. Then she said, “The only problem is your money won’t do no good, ‘cause it ain’t just money that matters. It matters who you are, and you’re Dorthea Railer, the tramp that knocked off her old man, the uppity white trash who prances around town like a queen. You don’t belong. You can have cars and dresses and money—plenty of folks down the hill got money—but they know better than to go where they don’t belong.”

Dorthea heard the wood creak as Ermel followed her onto the porch.
Dorthea walked straight to her car without looking back.

“And you might think twice the next time you feel like puttin’ on a show around here
little missy, ‘cause nobody shows up Ermel Railer. I’m surprised you didn’t remember that. Well I bet you’ll remember now…when you see my five dollars.” She laughed hoarsely, like a sick cow.

Without a word
, Dorthea started the engine and turned the car around to leave. She locked her head into place, facing forward, determined to rob Ermel of even the slightest sign of a glance. That didn’t stop her misty eyes, though, from wandering to the rearview mirror where they saw Ermel still standing on the porch, still grinning smugly.

Dorthea
got chopped down to size that day. The idea that she might someday waltz into Sunny Slope Manor, with all her baggage in tow, had turned out to be a big joke, big enough that even Ermel and her gin-pickled brain saw it. Then, less than a year after this mother-daughter get-together, Dorthea’s misery became complete when Billy Newfield, the prince of Prospect Park, announced his engagement to Judith. Sunny Slope Manor would indeed be getting a new queen, and it turned out to be the person Dorthea most hated—next to her own mother.

~~~

While Dorthea had her particular brand of misery, on December 7, 1941, six months after Bill and Judith’s wedding, the good people of Prospect Park, and the people of America as a whole, fell in line with the misery of much of the rest of the world. In one day, blatant military aggression suddenly became impossible to ignore—at home or overseas—and the stories from Europe of torture, confiscated fortunes, and loved ones taken at midnight, which before had sounded too outrageous to be true, now somehow seemed believable. Young men swamped the recruiting offices, trembling in readiness to swear a military oath. And so the misery began, first benignly, checked by the make-believe veneer of war and by the bravado of the young recruits, and then forcefully, violently, as the war unfolded for real, and hundreds of thousands suffered the misery of total loss.

Of all the
miserable souls left at home in Prospect Park, none seemed to suffer more than Dorthea’s other former sister, Abigail Evans, who seemed to fall victim to one tragedy after another. The first and most severe blow hit in 1943 when her three year old daughter, Katherine, the child who had precipitated the shotgun wedding to the butcher, which in turn had precipitated a full season of rich gossip, died of pneumonia. With husband John stationed on the other side of the country, Abigail collapsed into bed, where she alternately wailed for the dead child and screamed for her absent husband, all the while doing her utmost to fight off any attempts at consolation or medical intervention. Finally her frazzled sister, Judith, got word to John through the Red Cross, and he flew home on thirty days bereavement. At the funeral, Abigail desperately clutched his arm and looked utterly lost.

The second blow
happened after the war. John had come home. He hadn’t fallen in battle. After a few sulky, miserable years, though, he did fall into the arms of an older woman, who, coincidentally, happened to be quite rich. It had been no secret that marrying Abigail hadn’t been a ticket to the good life that John had envisioned. That’s what the good people said, that the duchess had pegged him for a climber and had rejected him. That’s why nobody ever saw his name in the society column or in the duchess’ private box at the polo matches or riding up to Toomington Hall in the Rolls Royce. And if the Rolls did happen to visit the little bungalow down the hill, it happened only during the day, with John away at work at his father’s butcher shop. According to rumor, he’d even been overheard saying that Abigail hadn’t been his first choice, and that if he would’ve known how things would turn out, he’d have passed her right by. Now it seemed that John had dusted off his gigolo propensities and had rectified that mistake once and for all. In early 1949, without warning, John moved to France with his lover and her money.

Abigail’s mother and sister didn’t begin to fathom why this
particular event qualified as any sort of tragedy. Abigail had been set free from a presumptuous little tormentor who couldn’t keep his hands off other women’s assets. And he’d been exiled to a foreign country. It didn’t get any better than that. Judith had her confidant back and planned for the two of them to soon be steamrolling their peers like never before. And the duchess had gotten back her wayward daughter and, more importantly, a means to re-burnish the family name by dusting her off a bit and re-introducing her into society. If Abigail didn’t see the joy of it, they did. So they celebrated and barely tried to hide the glee, until, that is, they found out that the butcher had left behind a pregnant wife.

On July
23, 1949, Abigail gave birth to a healthy baby girl named Sarah Lorraine Evans. Without mentioning any unpleasant details, the newspapers announced that Bill and Judith Newfield had welcomed a niece into their family. Society friends politely overlooked the paternal shortcomings of the child and sent notes to the duchess congratulating her on being blessed with a new granddaughter. When mother and baby left the hospital, though, they didn’t go to Toomington Hall to live with Grandmother or to Sunny Slope Manor to live with Auntie, they went to the little bungalow down the hill. At this point, as the story went, Judith demanded that Abigail move back up the hill, saying she had brought enough shame to the family without putting on a special show for the grocers and shopkeepers. Abigail, who’d recently been showing signs of religious fervor, boldly proclaimed that she intended to raise her daughter down the hill away from the evil seduction of money and power. And thus began a tug of war over little Sarah Evans. For the next twenty years, Judith, with help from the duchess until her death, resolutely pulled Sarah up the hill, while Abigail pulled her right back down.

Pitting the glamour and privilege of Sunny Slope Manor against the humdrum and want of a little house in the flatlands never
did seem like much of a contest. It’s a mystery why Abigail persisted in such a war, unless, perhaps, she just happened to be a strange duck, as the good people had sometimes whispered ever since the day she’d run off with the butcher’s son.

For Judith’s part, while she
freely gave advice to Abbey about how to raise Sarah, parenthood didn’t interest her personally. She’d married Bill Newfield, the most eligible bachelor in town, and lived in the closest thing to a castle America had to offer. And since Bill had gone off to war shortly after their marriage, she’d never had the opportunity to show off her accomplishment and to properly step into her role as the new mistress of Sunny Slope Manor. She had some making up to do and didn’t care to get bogged down with a baby.

Even when she did
give birth to her only child, almost five years after Sarah’s birth, it soon became apparent that she still didn’t find parenting a particularly compelling subject. And her daughter showed it. Veronica Lynn Newfield, born on February 10, 1954, quickly became a notoriously spoiled child.

Both Abigail and Judith had walked down the aisle. That’s what women did. They married, had babies, and then lived a life of regret. Abigail had had two kids herself, counting the dead girl, and, after playing princess for the better part of a decade, Judith had one too.

Husbands and babies didn’t interest
Dorthea. Those kinds of emotional cords, the ones that bind one person to another, had always seemed strange to her. As a child, the sight of hugging, kissing families had made her squirm and cover her eyes—especially the sight of hugging, kissing mothers. As an adult, threats of affection became obstacles to avoid when possible, to endure when not. Abigail kissed everyone in sight, especially her poor daughter Sarah. And whenever she met up with Judith they embraced like one of them had just survived a dangerous flight over the Atlantic. Everybody had somebody. Abigail had her daughter and her sister. Judith had her sister, niece, and husband. Even Ermel had sons and daughters who hadn’t ditched her, as well as the extended clan in Santa Marcela—not that she showered any of them with love, but they belonged to her and she didn’t pretend otherwise. Dorthea didn’t belong to anyone. She had Sunny Slope Manor, the fantasy, the padlocked lover, and she didn’t sit at night in a darkened room, drinking lonely glasses of wine, yearning for a beating heart and a warm embrace.

S
he did mourn the wasted years, though.

For
eleven long years she’d proven her worth to the people on the hill. She’d turned herself into that rare person who actually makes a fortune instead of one who just dreams about one. And, whether they admitted it or not, she had the means to buy and sell some of those people on the hill two and three times over, and had no cause to hang her head in front of any of the others either. And none of it mattered because, just like Ermel had said, they didn’t take her kind of money on the hill.

For half those years,
before that day when Ermel set her straight, Dorthea had thought that it all came down to having enough fight. That’s how it worked. You fought for things. She’d slug it out down the hill, grow rich and powerful, and then take it up the hill in a buying and selling wrestling match where the fattest pocket book left standing won the prize. She didn’t entertain girlish dreams about a pumpkin turning into a carriage and whisking her straight to the castle. She dreamed about fighting from one circle of power to the next, year after year, proving enemies wrong, humiliating them with wealth and accomplishment, until she reached Sunny Slope Manor and everyone around declared that it could only belong to her.

The fight never happened and she never proved a thing. That’s not to say she didn’t have enemies, because she did.
She saw them every day, the ones who’d beaten her without lifting a finger, driving by in chauffeured limousines, decked out in Chanel suits and Dior dresses, or in their Sunday sports cars, with kidskin driving gloves and scarves flying in the wind. Old money, that’s who they were. It’s the one thing that mattered in Prospect Park and the one thing she couldn’t buy. You could be young with old money or old with old money. You could have mountains of it or just impressive piles. You could be tenth generation tulip money, or fifth generation railroad money, or even third generation bootleg liquor money. It didn’t matter. You just had to be old money.

Yes, she saw her enemies, plain as day,
but they didn’t see her. Why would they? With their perfect world perfectly buttoned up, the sight of Dorthea Railer swinging at the wind didn’t merit any notice whatsoever. That gnawed like a rat too.

Then one day in
1945, at age twenty-nine, Dorthea briefly broke into their world and made the enemy look her in the face. It happened on the day that Archibald Newfield, Bill’s elderly father, fell to his death from a cliff near the top of Bryson Canyon. According to the newspaper articles, which Dorthea clipped and saved, Archibald’s butler saw him at the very back of the property talking to a stranger who stood on the other side of the hedge that straddled Sunny Slope Manor and the cliffs of Bryson Canyon. The stranger wore a bandana over his face like a robber. The butler went to investigate, but by the time he made his way out the back door and down the back porch, both Archibald and the stranger had disappeared.

The police found the body a day later and claimed that all
Archibald’s personal belongings had been found on or near the body, thus ruling out robbery. That was a lie and Dorthea had a wristwatch to prove it.

~~~

Dorthea peered down through the opening in the hedge and saw two people on the back porch. Finally some signs of life from the house. The men’s voices caused her to rule out Judith, the Madame, who she’d especially like to spy on, and Bill too, because the newspaper said he’d gone away on business. Maybe old man Newfield himself had finally decided to show his face. Dorthea kind of liked that possibility.

They walked down the
back steps to the back lawn.

One man,
dressed in a safari outfit, walked with a stoop. The other, short and stout, seemed to be a servant of some sort, and walked a half step behind, talking. Dorthea stared intently.

Archibald Newfield
, current patriarch and grandson of George Newfield, the nineteenth century potentate who’d swindled his way into a Spanish land grant, had always fancied himself a man’s man in the Teddy Roosevelt mold, complete with dangerous mountain climbs, nerve rattling elephant hunts, and an occasional swim with piranhas. Judging by his clothes and his tone with the other man, this had to be him.

They passed
from the back lawn and into the English garden, heading straight toward Dorthea. She could leave now and never get caught or she could stay and watch. She stayed.

“Sir, I don’t believe the trail has been tended to in quite some time,” said the servant. “Would it not be better to choose another activity for now? I have five boxes of clay pigeons and it is a perfect day for shooting. If you don’t mind me saying it, sir, it has been a while and I would not be surprised if your shooting has grown a bit rusty.”

Newfield stopped, stood up straight and faced the other man. “I can assure you, Hodges, if there’s any rust around here, it will be found between your ears and not in my shooting.” He then continued his stooped march toward the canyon trail.

“I am not saying you are not a good shot, sir. All I am saying is I doubt you are as good as you used to be since you have not practiced.”

“No Hodges, that isn’t what you are saying, and you know it. What you are really saying is that I am too old to hike down Bryson Canyon.”

“Sir, I would never say such a thing.”

“It doesn’t matter, because I do need to practice my shooting…as soon as I get back.”

They had come to a stop next to Dorthea. She
heard the gravel crunch beneath their feet and saw Newfield’s khaki pants tucked into his laced-up black boots. Excitement pulsed through her body and she wanted to laugh.

“Now I want you to go back into the house. If I need you I’ll blow a whistle or something.
I’m sure you’ll come running.”

“Yes
sir, very good sir, but I just remembered I forgot your walking stick—”

“Hodges! My nanny died fifty years ago and I don’t remember hiring you to take her place, but if I did, you’re fired. Now get back in the house and do what
ever it is I pay you to do!”

“Yes sir,” said the servant, but his feet didn’t move or even point in the other direction.

“Now!” bellowed the old man.

Hodges scurried back to the house
, and Newfield stepped over to the edge of the trail, spread his legs apart about a shoulder’s distance, put his hands on his hips, and started some deep breathing exercises. Then he tried some stretching to the right and to the left with hands still on hips. Next came toe touching, even though he didn’t come close to touching his toes, followed by a single deep knee bend, which resulted in a complete collapse. Kneeling there on the ground, he looked over his shoulder to the right to see if anyone had seen his feebleness, then to the left and looked straight into Dorthea’s eyes. He stared, blinked, and stared again.

“I say there, you in the bushes. What are you doing there?”

Dorthea quickly slid to the left, away from the opening.

“That won’t work. I already saw you. What are you doing?”

She could outrun this old fart any day of the week. Why not have some fun first? Trying to make her voice sound like a man’s, she said, “I was about to watch an old man fall off a cliff, if it’s any of your business.”

“It is my business since you’re on my property, but I certainly wo
n’t deprive you of your entertainment. Perhaps you’d like to see what happens after an ‘old man’ puts the collar on a trespasser.” He pushed himself up like a toddler by pressing his hands to the ground, raising his butt, locking his knees and then raising from the waist.

“If you’re talking about the same old man I’m talking about, I don’t think he could put the collar on anybody without his butler there to do it for him.”

“That’s where you’re wrong you little criminal,” he said, as he approached the hedge with measured steps, no doubt happy to be back in the hunt. “The only thing my butler is good for is aggravation, which I’ll gladly demonstrate before the police cart you away.”

She
pulled up the bandana from around her neck and covered half her face, and then stood up. He edged up close and stared at her over the top of the hedge.

“Good heavens, man! You’re a woman!”

“Yes, a young woman. And fast too, which means I’ll be taking my leave of you now. But don’t worry, I’ll be back.”

With that she
quickly made her way around the boulder, back toward the trail.

“We’ll just have to see about that now won’t we,” he said.

When she got past the boulder, Newfield’s wrinkled face greeted her with a smile. Hedge still separating them, she continued sidestepping to the left. He followed. She got to the trail, so did he, and they stood face to face, nothing separating them at all. She turned and ran down the trail, slowing at the first switchback to make it around the slippery corner, and then turning on the speed again. She listened for signs that the old man had tried to follow and heard the sandpaper sound of skidding feet. Then the noise stopped. She looked back and saw a red face and bouncing jowls. Unbelievable. He’d made the turn and had pulled up right behind. The next switchback appeared directly ahead, a straight shot. She lowered her head and flew down the trail. Ten yards. Twenty. Thirty. But she still heard him. She glanced back and saw the old goat still on her tail. How could that be? She looked again and saw wild arms and legs, and she knew he wasn’t running at all. He was barreling, out of control, like a boulder down a mountain—with her directly in his path. She didn’t mind if he launched himself off the cliff but she had no intention of going along for the ride.

She slowed for a few steps and then jumped into the air toward the inside of the trail, away from the ledge. T
he heels of her hiking boots hit first, with a jolt, then her butt, and finally her hands, which kept her head from slamming onto the ground. At first she skidded along, her bare legs bearing the brunt of the gritty, scraping punishment, but then her heels broke through the hard crust and found their way to deep sand and she started slowing, like a truck plowing into a runaway barrier.

S
he opened her eyes in time to see Newfield fly by.

And he saw her. Arms flailing, body contorted, legs desperately fighting to keep up with
the whole sorry mess, but he still had his eyes on the quarry. Teddy Roosevelt would’ve been proud.

And then he went down. Like mop water thrown
onto the ground, he spilled onto the trail and slid headfirst straight for the switchback, straight for the cliff. The toes of his boots bounced rapid fire along the top of the hard packed trail but they didn’t dig in. They didn’t stop the slide, or even slow it. And neither did his hands, which led the procession, palms down, whirling and floundering. He held his head steady, upright, and no doubt saw the horror that waited when he overshot the turn. Just before the end, he grabbed for a passing boulder. He came up empty but the impact of his arm against the rock sent his body spinning around so that his feet now led the way. It also sapped just enough momentum that he came to a stop with half his body hanging over the cliff and the other half clinging to the ledge.

Dorthea sat in the dirt
and watched. The plucky old man knew how to put up a fight.

With a red, sweaty face, he took a hissing, short sip of air, and then another one. Then air exploded from his mouth, he gasped loudly, and his body
sank. He clenched his jaw and strained to raise himself back up. He needed air but didn’t seem to have enough strength to breathe and hold up his body at the same time. He went back to sucking little gulps of air and Dorthea saw clinched, glistening muscles through the saggy folds of his neck. When his face turned purple he tried again for a bigger breath but his body once again slipped. He held his breath and rocked his tense shoulders back and forth, like the ends of a teeter-totter, falling and rising, fighting to raise himself back up. All the while he stared at his forearms as they pressed onto the ledge, holding all his weight. His life rested on those skinny, wrinkled arms.