The Fan-Shaped Destiny of William Seabrook (33 page)

“So, did Lee play?” Justine asked, her interest seemingly drawn back just a bit.

“Well, not with Willie. Lee liked to watch the bondage photography, but she turned down his entreaties for her to pose.
⁷⁰
Man Ray had a story about Willie telephoning them to come by his studio in Montparnasse one evening. It seemed he was going
out for the evening with Mink …”

“Who?” Justine snapped, peevishly.

“Willie’s pet name for Marjorie. Anyway, it developed into a request that Man Ray and Lee baby-sit a girl whom Willie had
chained to the newel of the staircase …”
⁷¹

Uncomfortably similar to the night in Mississippi, I was interrupted as Justine grew distinctly agitated. This time, however,
I was able to ascertain the ominous cause. We were at Hyde Park, and the road ran close again to the River. She was looking
nervously about for the legendary River mansions. My enthusiasm for the story plunged, and she lapsed once more into that
uncharacteristically moody reverie.

When, in the late afternoon, we gained the bridge across the mile-wide expanse of the Hudson, I felt we were being propelled,
as by an elemental force, into the dark heart of the mystery. The law office was tucked away on North Front Street, overlooking
the old Stockade historical district. That was the collection of stone structures that had survived the Revolution, when the
Redcoats had burned Kingston to the ground.

————————

T
HE QUALITY OF THE SUNLIGHT
had slightly but perceptibly shifted with the change in latitude. I was glad I had a jacket and was reminded that, not much
farther up the road, beyond the time-haunted houses of Saugerties, lay the back door into New England—Stephen King country,
H.P. Lovecraft country. As when “crossing the Styx” in the Mississippi night, I felt we had come to yet another edge of the
known world.

That mind-set, perhaps coupled with the old houses we’d seen while driving up, was working on me when we did not find Roder
in the office and were obliged to wait for a bit. From the window I surveyed the Stockade and reflected on possibly the only
good lines of poetry Lovecraft ever wrote—of slanting sunlight on ancient stone structures, painting with life the shapes
of the past. He’d imagined an aether in some old things that whispered of hidden dimensions.

“Even in his time, we still felt our connection to the Enlightenment. Americans regarded the ‘Lords of Great Britain’ as the
enemy, or very dubious allies at the least,” I felt called upon to pontificate on the Stockade’s history. “That was before
American dignitaries felt moved to bend the knee to their royalty, an act that in earlier time would have properly brought
a charge of treason.”

Justine was quite justifiably ignoring me, still lost in a world all her own. I looked back at the lowering sky and was struck
by the effects of an unfamiliar place on one’s psyche. The eccentricity of the views expressed was audible even as they came
from my mouth. I’d never been an Anglophobe or particularly given to political symbology. I was debating whether the odd burst
might not be mere avoidance of Lovecraft’s final line: “In that strange light, I feel I am not far, from the fix’t mass whose
sides the ages are.”

Roder, a large man, somewhat older than myself, arrived with profuse apologies for having made us wait. He kept glancing nervously
at Justine as he ushered us to a conference table in the library. He then reminisced on the days when he’d been a young intern
with the firm, and Seabrook had been still recalled as a colorful fixture of local history. The founding partners had regarded
their continuing custodianship of his purported final work as a source of some small pride, a lingering connection with the
past and to history, as it were.

Introduced as a vaguely defined friend of the family, I expressed the reverence in which Justine held the effects, extending
appreciation for the firm’s good stewardship over the decades. I inquired whether he had known the elder Justine.

“The old partners handled the important clients personally,” he responded. “They did business with the Astors, the Dows, Van
Dorens, Chapmans—all the old families.” His eyes repeatedly appraised Justine as he talked. “I would only briefly glimpse
her come and go, in the instances that she visited the office, back in the fifties and sixties.”

He explained that he had to meet with Justine personally to conclude a final bit of business. “I’m sorry that we could not
forward the effects on to you.
Mais naturellement,
the ancillary device we have on file is unequivocal. The bequest is conditional upon receipt in person.”

I began to assure him that the conditions were understood, but he cut me off and continued to Justine, “My dear, I am as you
see,
Québécois.
I hope you will take my heritage into account and not be offended by a compliment. The way you carry yourself, so dignified
while at the same time so sensuous—you remind me of her so much that the years roll away. You bring back, into this very room,
the
ambiance
of the one circumstance when she met with me personally.”

Roder seemed chagrined by his forwardness and, while Justine smiled gracefully, he possibly took the chill I was feeling as
disapproval. He hastened to a huge old wall safe, returning with a large wrapped package, which he deposited before her.

“On her final visit, she asked to speak with me, as the youngest member of the firm. It was an exceptional conversation,
à la langue française,
by the way—at her pleasure. She instructed me to ensure a verbal message be delivered, designating the beneficiary of her
estate, by whomever would eventually finalize this business.”

Still exquisitely poised, Justine lifted an eyebrow, and Roder looked flustered, “It was a single phrase, all that I can remember
her speaking
en bon anglais,
to be directed to you. But of course, you were not even born when—I can see her yet with the tears in her eyes—she bequeathed
her legacy …

“‘T
O THE ONE WHO PERHAPS CARED THE MOST.
’”

————————

In the uncomfortable silence that followed, Roder busied himself with the wrappings, and I looked at Justine. She would only
shrug, but the profound pain betrayed around her own eyes troubled me. He placed in her hands a large leather portfolio, beginning
to crack with all the years. Her fingers trembled as she struggled with the old zipper.

Then she just stared at the stacks of notepads of every description, clipped bundles of loose scraps, and some typewritten
sheets that lay exposed before her. Her vibrating fingertips moved over the array and stopped upon a small bundle of envelopes.
They were tied in the old fashion with faded ribbons, not unlike those in her cedar chest at home. Seated close to her, I
could feel the tension in her body as I read the front of the top one, addressed to Madeleine Leiris from William Seabrook.

As Justine struggled for control, I could see Roder’s wonder at the degree to which the young heiress was moved by the touch
of those long-ago people. Almost inaudibly, she asked about the manuscript itself. Taken aback, the attorney reddened and
apologized for being derelict. He confessed that, knowing she would be coming for it soon, he’d been trying to read it. As
he hurried to retrieve it from his office, Justine looked at me, brushing at the tears that had welled up.

“It hurts so much,” she whispered, “and I don’t even know why! It’s as if the simple reality of these little pieces of their
lives is too much to bear.”

Roder returned to surrender the volume. Though it allegedly consisted of a narrative extracted from the notes, the elder Justine
appeared to have treated it as a completed work by Willie. The typed sheets had been professionally bound inside a lavish,
oversize set of covers.

Justine opened it to the front sheet, which could well have been typed on the old Underwood upright from her desk. It read
simply,
The Fan-Shaped Destiny.
Visibly emotional, Justine excused herself and went unsteadily to find their facilities. Roder expressed nothing short of
awe at such a young person being overcome by the matters of relatives she had never known.

“She’s an exceptional young woman,” I replied to him, with resignation more than pride.

“Without a doubt!” he exclaimed, eyes widening, his sense of the dramatic fully engaged. “
Écoutez,
she is like an image of the old lady. While I never knew that one so young, it is as though she is here again; I don’t know
how to express it.”

After verifying that I already knew something of the nature of the old woman’s business, Roder told me that she’d become a
fable in select circles. While few had known her name, her power had become substantial throughout the South, and she’d not
been one to be trifled with in New York either. I was inferring mob, something about which I’d wondered.

“We heard that her ‘other’ contacts were with families that went all the way back to the Black Hand. She’d known Huey Long.
During that one conversation, she claimed to have been in the Arlington Hotel, in Hot Springs, when a meeting decided whether
or not he would recover from his bullet wound. She was doing business in New Orleans during the time of Earl Long and Blaze
Starr …”

Roder’s vicarious enjoyment darkened, “There was also a
rumor
that she had psychic powers, and dabbled in voodoo … but listen.” He spoke quickly before Justine could return, telling me
that he doubted the publication value of the manuscript or its attendant notes. “I’m no critic, but I think that he must have
been quite mad by the time he was writing this. At least, I could make no sense at all of what I read.”

Assuring him that the value of the effects to Justine was not determined by their literary merit or lack of it, I would have
learned more about the old woman’s supposed later history. But Justine returned, more composed and ready to leave. Roder accompanied
us to the car, supremely solicitous of her and inviting us to call again before we left. As he gallantly held the Lumina’s
door for her, she paused and drew herself erect.

No doubt an illusion of the lengthening shadows, as if they wrapped themselves about her—that she seemed to gain an inch or
so of stature. Had the tresses that veiled her features likewise gone to darkened auburn, as she addressed him huskily?

“Believe me when I say that you have discharged your commission admirably,” she spoke over her shoulder, barely turning. “I
hope our association continues. It’s a comfort to find you’re here,
m’vieux,
should I be needful.” When I gave him a final nod, the gregarious Roder looked curiously speechless.

As we cruised through Kingston, Justine held like a baby the portfolio into which she’d replaced the bound manuscript. Her
cheek against the old leather, she seemed truly at ease for the first time during the trip. We were booked on a return flight
to Atlanta on Saturday. Our plan had been to prowl Rhinebeck Friday morning, then drive down and play in the City that evening.
It had seemed only logical to view some of the old haunts of the Seabrook saga while we were on location.

I did still feel a degree of uneasiness as we drove the several miles to the bridge and crossed the Hudson to Rhinecliff and
Rhinebeck. I had presumed that we would settle into the quaint little Rhinebeck bedand-breakfast Roder had recommended, and
Justine would begin to read the manuscript. But by the time we had finished checking in, she decided that she felt up for
finding Seabrook’s place right then. I was of divided mind.

I felt I was against the wall on this. Of course, after all the research I’d done, I was interested in seeing the actual locations
of much of the story. Especially the barn where Willie had conducted his “experiments” with such as Aldous Huxley and Walter
Duranty, as well as the Greenwich Village sites. Who knew when I might be back?

Still, the black thoughts from the trip up had not abated, so I tried to persuade her to wait until morning. She was insistent,
pointing out that the weather was holding so far, and there was yet time before dark. She held that it was best to locate
the old home then, in case the storm reached us before morning. I agreed, with the provision that we went immediately, before
it got any later.

The River was just visible from the road. With the help of an address from the old envelopes, and some tourist brochures,
we searched along a street that ran close to its bank. Some of the numbers along Morton Road were obscure, and we drove up
and down, wandering some side streets. We glimpsed a number of large houses, the great round columns of the several mansions
surprisingly resembling Southern plantation houses.

Willie had been released from the sanitarium in July of 1934, into the care of his psychoanalyst, Helen Montague. She was
the wife of Columbia philosopher William Pepperell Montague, who was heavily into the influence of other dimensions on our
experience. Seabrook had finished
White Monk
while in Blooming-dale, and wrote
Asylum
while staying with the Montagues after his release. Guests who had frequented the Montague farm at nearby Krumvallen were
mostly Columbia colleagues and their spouses. Some of them had been around Willie’s psychic experimentation in New York ten
years earlier. A divorce from Katie was finalized.

In the fall, Marjorie obtained for them the place on the Hudson.
Asylum
was quickly serialized and began to bring in money. The Depression was not so bad for people who had cash cows, and Willie
was never without a book contract. The house had been a cottage on ten acres, with a huge barn. Willie had, indeed, subsequently
converted it to house his studio and guest quarters, and to display the memorabilia of his travels, including the impressive
collection of voodoo dolls.

It was next door to an estate where President Roosevelt frequently visited a favorite cousin, which I took to be the present-day
Wilderstein Preservation. Nearby, Thomas Wolfe had written
Of Time and the River
just a few years earlier. Willie mixed in well with the locals of all classes, from Olin Dows to the local cab driver.