That Camden Summer (28 page)

"Oh, that."

They rumbled away from the boulevard down the dark street, their lamp beams bouncing with every pile of horse dung and pothole they crossed.

"Don't you think we should?" "Yes, I suppose so."

"All right then, you let me know and I'll come over whenever you say and we'll get that straightened out."

"You think we can?

"Don't know, but we got to try, don't we?" "Yes, I suppose we do."

"All right," he said as they approached her house. "Now, what are you going to tell the girls about tonight?"

"The truth. What else can I do when I'm wearing Caroline's dress? Besides, I had a lot

of time to think while you were gone, and I decided that I've never hidden the truth from my girls before, and we've always fared just fine. I'll figure out a way to tell them that won)t traumatize them."

He braked, shut off the engine, set the levers and said, "All right, Roberta, we'll do this your way. Nothing but the truth."

"What about Isobel?"

He considered a moment, then answered, "She's the same age as Susan."

"But she's led a much more sheltered life. Besides, it really isn't her problem, is it? I'm not her mother."

He offered no response because he didn't know what to say.

Roberta lay her hand on the seat near his thigh. "I'll tell you something. I really don't know what I'm going to say when I walk in there. All four of those girls are innocents. They don't deserve to learn that the world has cruelty like Elfred's., and when I think about them finding out it makes me detest him all the more. He's their uncle, Gabe ... their uncle! Just think about that."

They did, for some time, in silence.

Finally Gabe sighed. "Well, let's just go in there and see what they say. I'll take my cue from you. "

"Thank you, Gabriel," she said.

They got out of the car and she waited while he stopped the carbide drip to the headlamps. Then they walked to her house to face their children, together.

I)QA

13

HE house smelled strongly of chocolate. The front room was dark-, but through Tthe lighted kitchen doorway Roberta glimpsed all four girls gathered around the table, leaning on their elbows, eating something from a flat pan. They were talking loudly and Lydia must have been entertaining, for she suddenly rocketed off her chair3 whizzed in a circle and flailed her arms as if she were a dervish.

The others were laughing as Roberta and Gabriel entered the room.

"Hello, girls. We're here," she announced. They all glanced at the doorway-, and their faces lit at the sight of Roberta and Gabriel together again.

"You're both here!" Rebecca exclaimed. "We're both here."

"Does that mean you've made up?" Lydia asked.

"I guess it does. What's in the pan?" "Fudge. Becky made it for supper.,, "Fudge? For supper?"

"Well, you weren't here_, so we didn't know what else to have. And besides-, we were in the Mood for it."

Susan had been eyeing her mother curiously. "What's that you're wearing?"

Isobel answered, "It's my mother's dress." "Why are you wearing her mother's dress?"

Roberta looked down at the worn garment. "Because I had an emergency and needed something quick, and Gabriel offered to lend me this. "

"He did?" Isobel turned her wide eyes on her dad. "You told her she could wear Mother's clothes?"

"That's right," he said, feigning nonchalance, helping himself to a piece of fudge.

"But that's a maternity dress!"

Roberta explained, "I'm bigger than your mother. This was the only thing that fit." Rebecca had been holding back, more

suspicious than the rest. "What happened to your dress?" she asked, her attitude suggesting she wasn't buying these surface explanations. "It got soiled."

Gabe bit into his piece of fudge and Isobel asked, "What happened to your hand?" "Fistfight."

All four girls spoke at once. "What! 11

"A fistfight! "Over Mother?"

Everybody grew animated, and the babble sounded like a flock of pelicans. Rebecca's demand rang out at the end. "What's going on here?"

Roberta's eyes sought Gabe's. "I think we'd better tell them and get it over with."

"All right, whatever you say." He set down his fudge and said, "Susan, get your mother a chair. She's been through a lot tonight."

Susan went into the living room and returned

with the piano stool. When Roberta sat, Gabriel surprised everyone by taking up a stance behind her with his hands over her shoulders.

"What I have to say goes no farther than this room. Is that understood?" Roberta's eyes scanned the circle of solemn faces. Two of the girls nodded. "You neither confirm nor deny it, no matter what you might hear around town, no matter what your friends or any others might say to you. "

Rebecca spoke for all. "You have our promise, Mother. "

Roberta scrabbled through her mind for the proper place to begin. She extended her hands to the two girls nearest and said "I think I'll need some hands to hold. This is going to be difficult. "

Holding Lydia's and Susan's hands, she told her story-, avoiding overtly graphic descriptions and searching for veiled language.

"The reason Gabriel's hands are bruised is because he beat up your uncle Elfred for attacking me. I was out in the country and my car ran out of gas. Elfred came along and offered to help me fill my tank, and then he thought I should kiss him to thank him. When I refused, he got very rough with me and tried to force me to kiss him. He hurt me very badly and my clothes got dirty and I was very, very scared. "

It was apparent that only Rebecca understood the full import of what Roberta was telling them. Her face showed it. Though she sat at the table with the rest, she had advanced to

I Q Al

a plane of adult speculation that immediately distanced her from the three younger girls. She asked no questions, but Roberta knew they were rampaging through her head.

"Your uncle Elfred is not a nice man. He's a ... well ... how shall I say it?" "Womanizer," Gabriel offered, still bolstering her as before.

"Yes, I guess that's as good a word as any. Do you all know what that means?"

The younger girls looked at each other and shrugged sheepishly, their hands clasped between their knees under the table.

"He likes to flirt with other ladies besides Aunt Grace. Only sometimes it goes further than flirting, and he gets demanding. That's what happened to me."

Lydia asked innocently, "Did he hit you, Mommy?" She had given up calling Roberta Mommy long ago, but it crept back into her vernacular now that her mother's well-being was threatened.

"Well ... no." Roberta thought for a beat, then said more energetically, "But I hit him. Pretty hard, too."

"You did?" Lydia's eyes brightened. "Golly!" Before any of the youngsters could ask for details of the attack, Roberta steered the conversation on another tack. "Now listen to me, because this is important. Your cousins were there when Gabriel beat up their father, and so was Aunt Grace. So I'm not sure they'll want to come over here and do things with you anymore."

"Can't we ask them to?" Susan inquired. "Not for a while. Let things settle down a

little bit. And as for going over to their house, I'm afraid that's going to be against the rules from now on. "

Lydia looked dismayed, and Roberta could see a jag of whining coming on. Sure enough, Lydia whined, "But Sophie makes the best praline cookies. We all love her praline cookies, Mother."

"Nevertheless, I don't want you over there." Rebecca was staring at Gabe's hands on Roberta's shoulders. Her concerns far outstripped an end to Sophie's pralines.

Roberta took a deep breath and sat up straighter. "Gabriel and I thought you should know what happened, but I'm all right now, so you don't have to worry. I went to his house and he took good care of me, so now all we have to worry about is you four who ate nothing but fudge for supper, isn't that right?"

Though Roberta tried to end the discourse on a cheerier note, one of the group was noticeably more glum than the others when the evening broke up. Rebecca, already becoming estranged from her siblings by her infatuation with Ethan Ogier, withdrew to her bedroom, leaving the others to bid Isobel and Gabriel good night. They all wandered out to the porch where Isobel gave Roberta a good-bye hug and said, "I'm sorry Mr. Spear was so mean to you.,,

"Thank you, Isobel. But don't worry about me. Good night, sweetie." Fireflies were glimmering in the shrubs as the three girls

IIQQ

/,)On

went ahead. The neighborhood lay quiet beneath a moon-washed sky and the air had the dewy coolness that would leave the painted porch floor misted with moisture in the morning. Gabriel lingered on the porch with Roberta, feeling protective and loath to leave her. There, in the shadows, he put his hands on her shoulders, inquiring, "Will you be all right?"

It had taken a lot to bring out that touch of affection, she thought, but he still had a long way to go. "I'll be fine. I just need some rest."

A mosquito came buzzing, and he fanned it away from his ear. "You think you511 stay home tomorrow?"

"I need every cent I can earn. I'll be working." "In the country?"

"In Rockport in the morning. In the afternoon I don't know where until I get my orders. " ' "I'll worry about you, being out and about in your car from now on. "

"No sense worrying." She, too, waved off a mosquito. "Nobody but Elfred would present any kind of threat to me, and you've taken care of him. "

"Nevertheless, I'll worry."

"I'm not the kind who'll tuck my tail and hide, Gabriel. I simply have to do what I have to do, and if I have to drive through these mountains to support my girls, so be it. I'm not saying there won't be times when my heart won't jump into my throat if I see a man approaching me, but I'll just have to learn to live with it, won't I?"

He took one of her hands and covered it with his own. Their surroundings gave enough light for her to see the outline of his nose and chin, and pinpricks of reflected light from his eyes as he said quietly, "You're quite a woman, Roberta, you know that?"

"Actually, I think I'm pretty ordinary., but it's nice to hear you say that anyway. Thank you, Gabe. And thank you for beating up Elfred. I surely hope it doesn't get you into a bunch of trouble. "

He used their joined hands to knock a mosquito off his temple. "I don't think it will_, because underneath it all, Elfred's a coward, and if he accuses me publicly, he'll also have to explain why, publicly, and I don't think he's got the guts to do that. "

Just then Isobel called, "Dad-, come on! The mosquitoes are biting me!"

"Me-, too," he said to Roberta, and dropped her hand. "Well 3 good night. I'll try to stop by tomorrow night and see how you are."

"I'll be here," she said, and moved to the top of the steps as he descended them. He passed her girls bounding back to the house, hounded by mosquitoes, too.

"Night, Mr. Farley!" they chorused.

"Good night, girls. Take good care of your mother now. "

The girls mounted the steps in two leaps and Susan shrieked, "Come on, let's get inside before they eat us alive!"

Onn

In her bedroom ten minutes later, Roberta hung Caroline Farley's worn, stained lavender muslin maternity dress on a hook behind the door. Strewn around the room were her own discarded clothes from as long ago as a week. But the care she disdained for her own possessions she lavished on the dead woman's garment as dutifully as if Caroline herself were watching: She centered it carefully on a hanger5 and touched the stains gently before her hand trailed away and fell to her side.

Oh, Gabe, she thought, what are we going to do?

Removing the dress left Roberta naked. She put a hand to her lower belly and closed her eyes, hating Elfred Spear. Glancing down at her stripped limbs, she felt a wave of despair and the repressed urge to shed tears for herself. She had never been vain, not even remotely. Indeed, bodies, to Roberta, were merely the vessels housing the soul and mind and spirit. They needed fuel to power those souls and minds and spirits, as well as occasional maintenance, but beyond this, Roberta thought little of the human body's physicality. Looking down at herself she saw very clearly her mediocrity - size, texture, shape. All showed the history of a woman who had borne three children and spent a lifetime of hard work with little time for self-care. But her flesh - plump, unfirm though it was - was her own, no one else's to use as he wished.

She had no full-length mirror in the room, only a small rectangular one with a chipped plaster frame, hanging above a bureau. Passing

it, she caught a faint glimpse of her breasts, and hurried to cover them with nightclothes, as if Elfred might still be lurking.

Even when she had donned her faded summer nightgown and tried to think of tomorrow instead of today, the thick-throated urge to cry persisted. Two opposing wills urged her. One said, Cry. The other said, Don't cry. She was struggling between the two-1 straightening out her unmade bed when Rebecca knocked and said, "Mother, may I come in"

Roberta grabbed the sheets and rubbed both her eyes before calling, "Sure, Becky. Come ahead. "

Becky slipped in and hovered near the door, showing an uncharacteristic reserve. Backed up against it, she stared at her mother and attempted a flicker of a smile that failed dismally.

Roberta sat on the edge of her bed, trying to appear unemotional. "Still up?"

"I've been waiting."

Oh) BeckY5 Id hoped you wouldn It understand. I wanted to spare you that. Roberta's features dissolved into an admission of sadness. Too quietly she admitted, "I guess I knew that."

A stretch of silence brought the night closer and sharpened the need for truth. Where to go from here - one woman of thirty-six who knew too much about the world in which men and women met and clashed; one of sixteen who only suspected. One who wanted to protect, one who wanted to know.

Rebecca found the courage to speak first.

lin/1

/I n 113

"You didn't tell everything, did you?"

The terrible lump formed in Roberta's throat again and brought with it an overwhelming sorrowfulness. Her lips shaped the word no, but it failed to emerge as she wagged her head sorrowfully from side to side.