Charlotte’s Story (16 page)

Now there was hammering and laughter and the smell of cigarette smoke from the theater on the third floor, a sign that all was no longer wonderful between us. It was as though he had chosen a different future.

“He’s grieving,” Nonie had told me. “Maybe this is his way.” But her voice hadn’t held any conviction. Just as she knew when I was lying, I knew when she was trying to make me feel better.

By the time I’d showered and eaten breakfast, taken a walk with Michael, and spent an hour looking at books with him in the nursery, I knew I was just putting off the moment when I would go back into the morning room. For I
would
go back there.

In the kitchen, I mentioned to Marlene and Terrance that J. C. Jaquith would be arriving the next day, and that they should get a guest room ready, and that we would probably be having a small dinner party. As I explained, I could see from the tolerant looks on their faces that Press had already told them. They were humoring me: “Flowers in the guest room, Miss Charlotte? Beef for dinner, as Mr. and Mrs. Carstairs will be dining?” They obviously considered Press to be the one who was really in charge, not me. Had Terrance been like that with Olivia and Press’s father before he died? I tried to imagine the gentle Michael Searle going behind Olivia’s back, making arrangements for guests. I wished I had known him. I wished Olivia had let me know her better.

“Charlotte Bliss, where are you?” Always unpredictable, Rachel had let herself in the front door with a great, undignified shout.

I was sitting briefly in Nonie’s room, where she was watching a daytime talk program on one of the two television channels we could receive, with Michael playing with blocks on the floor
nearby. Her room was close to the nursery at the front of the house, and the door was open, so Rachel’s entry was clearly audible. Nonie raised her eyebrows, but I couldn’t help but smile.

Would Rachel have announced herself that way if Olivia had been alive? Absolutely not. If Press had been home? Maybe. But it heartened me that she thought I wouldn’t mind.

I leaned over the gallery railing.

“Here we are, Rachel.”

She peered up at me.

When she saw my drab day dress, she waved a dismissive hand. “What are you wearing? You all look like one of those sad ladies in a vacuum cleaner advertisement. The
before
picture—you know, when she’s all covered up in dust bunnies and baby goo.”

I smiled. “You’re too kind.” Seeing her enormous stomach again, I thought I’d better go down to meet her, rather than ask her to come up. I hurried downstairs.

“You look wonderful. As always. You’re glowing.” I kissed her cheek.

Rachel looked down and lightly touched the pouf of fuchsia below the empire waist of her top.

“Balls! I am not. I’m hardly showing at all.” She grinned at her own joke.

In truth, Rachel was almost always glowing. It was only when she was sick with the flu or some other malady that she didn’t look her best. Even then, she simply looked wan, like the exotic heroine of a dime-store novel.

I noticed Terrance standing respectfully at the entrance to the dining room. All morning, I’d been wrestling with the desire to ask him about Michael Searle and Olivia.

“Yes, Terrance?”

“Shall I prepare some iced tea, ma’am? A plate of cakes in the morning room?”

The lantern was still set up in the morning room, and the thought of Rachel seeing it worried me. What would she say about it? I had told her about seeing Olivia, but she would truly think me insane if I described what I’d seen only hours earlier. And I would never in a million years tell her what I’d seen between the boys who looked like Jack and Press.

“How about the salon?” I looked at Rachel.

“Just bring them up to milady’s room, Terrance. I’m going to get this beastly girl into some proper clothes and take her away for a civilized lunch. I may not even bring her back until tomorrow. How’s that for a scandal?”

“Very good, Miss Rachel.”

Terrance returned to the kitchen.

“Rachel, I can’t go anywhere. I really don’t want to see anyone.” Except for my brief visit to her house, I hadn’t been out since the funeral. The idea of being around a crowd caused my gut to seize with panic. Not only was it too soon, but there would be the stares. I was the woman who had gotten drunk and let her daughter die.

“Don’t say no, Charlotte. Do it for me. Please?” She took my hand. “Soon I’ll be stuck in the house forever. Please? Just for a few hours.” Her eyes were pleading, like a child’s.

It was a typically selfish rationale, and I almost told her so. “It’s too soon. Nonie doesn’t feel well today. Michael is such a handful.” Yet another lie. It was getting easier. The excuse that Nonie didn’t feel well had simply sprung to my lips.

“Marlene is here. You’ve let Marlene watch the—” Here, she stumbled. Rachel, who hardly ever misspoke, had been about to say “the children.” Recovering quickly, she lowered her voice. “I’ll speak to Marlene if you want me to. You know she won’t mind.”

First she had told Terrance that he should take tea to my bedroom, and now she was about to make decisions about with whom Michael should be left. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with her bossiness, but
somewhere I found the patience to deal with her pleasantly. I tried again to distract her.

“You should take your mother to lunch. What’s she doing? You said she was anxious about the baby. Being a grandmother.”

Rachel rolled her eyes. “Jesus, Charlotte. She’s been practicing her
bubbe
act since I got my first period. Yesterday she decided that the baby’s not going to be a boy after all and came back from Lynchburg with a car full of everything pink. She’s completely wrong, of course. You have to save me from her.”

I glanced up at the gallery, thinking about the morning room. If I left, would I miss my chance to see more? Would Olivia abandon me?

Misunderstanding, Rachel grabbed my hand and held it in both of hers. “Let’s get you changed. You know getting away for a while is the best thing.” She brought my hand to her lips to give it a quick kiss. “Let’s go, darling.”

The day was glorious. We wound long silk scarves—mine white, Rachel’s a vibrant orange—around our hair and left for The Grange with the windows of the Thunderbird all the way down. Nonie had looked surprised; but when she saw that I was dressed for going out, she shooed me out of the nursery before I could change my mind. Michael had looked up from his blocks and gave me a tight-lipped, dutiful kiss. A few minutes later, as Rachel circled the Thunderbird out of the driveway, I put my head out the window to see Nonie standing behind Michael in the window as he waved
good-bye
.

As we left the lane, heading for town, I felt my heart lighten. I was still anxious, but I was neither at the house without Eva, nor was I yet faced with other people staring at me. Judging me. I was also filled with affection for Rachel—this Rachel. She was the bright, light, fun Rachel I had loved for so long. Most of her
pregnancy she’d been cross, complaining that Jack was treating her like an invalid. I wasn’t sure how she was feeling about Helen and Zion, but this wasn’t the time to ask. She had obviously pushed it away for the time being. Resting my head on the back of the Thunderbird’s white leather seat, I felt the sunshine on my face, and let the wind tug at the layers of sadness that had accumulated since Olivia’s and Eva’s deaths.

When we were finally through Old Gate and on the two-lane highway that would take us within a mile of the old hotel, Rachel slowed a bit and told me to look in the glove box. Inside, I found a leather-covered flask I hadn’t seen since our college days, and a pack of Marlboros.

“Good Lord. It’s not even lunchtime yet.”

“Terrance fed us, right? It’s not like we’re drinking on an empty stomach. Besides, all I can drink is brandy these days. Everything else makes me throw up.”

Alcohol had made me sick during both of my pregnancies. Press had teased me, saying I was a big strong girl and was just pretending to be delicate, but he’d been wrong.

I opened the flask and held it out to Rachel. She drank in small sips, then handed it back to me. “This makes me happy! I’m so glad to get you away.”

Lifting the flask to my lips, I tilted it but put my tongue against the opening so that I barely tasted the brandy at all. But I wanted it, God help me. Where was my resolve to never again touch the stuff that had led to Eva’s death? And we were on our way to The Grange, which was the social center of our part of the state—a place where I was known. A place where they would all know what had happened to Eva. I might shame myself. Shame Press.

I drank as deeply as I could, given the scorching the stuff gave my throat, and ended by having a coughing fit, holding the flask far away from me so it wouldn’t spill. Rachel laughed, saying I drank like a girl.

What a strange thrill it was to be drinking in the open air in the middle of the day, as though we were teenagers again. When my coughing calmed and I could swallow again, I took another, less ambitious drink.

“Light me a cigarette, honey.” Rachel gave a little wave toward the glove box. Using the Thunderbird’s automatic lighter, I lit a cigarette for Rachel and passed it to her. We weren’t driving terribly fast, but the wind caught at the smoke, pulling it in a disappearing stream from Rachel’s mouth almost as soon as she exhaled.

“No ciggy for you? You want some of mine?” Rachel held the lipstick-stained end of hers toward me.

“No. Right now, I’m happy.” And I almost was. It was the closest I’d come to feeling happy in a long time.

Chapter 15

The Grange

The Grange Hotel was like an oasis in the wilderness, built a decade after the Revolutionary War as an inn for travelers headed across what was then the enormous state of Virginia to points west. But there’d been some change in the road, an exorbitant toll put up by a farmer who owned a small part of the land the road passed through, and his neighbors saw an opportunity and rerouted the road. The hotel suffered from the lack of traffic and the appearance of other, more modern inns, and was bankrupted more than once. But when the Civil War came, it was commissioned to house wounded Confederate officers and spruced up. During the post-war depression it sank back into ignominy, then was finally rescued by a syndicate that included Press’s grandfather. I’d witnessed Olivia being treated with a particular kind of reverence when we were there with her. But for the first couple of years of my marriage, the waiters either continued not to recognize
me, or pretended not to recognize me when I was there on my own, until I signed the check with “House Account No. 12.”

There were only 250 house accounts. Rachel’s family didn’t even have one. Press said they probably wouldn’t ever get one anyway because they were Jewish, and while I could believe it, it made me sad that—after the terrible war in Europe—any Americans could be so cruel.

Bolstered by the brandy, we browsed the hotel’s tiny village of shops. Rachel couldn’t try any clothes on but pushed several dresses on me with the help of the saleswoman.

“It’ll be Thanksgiving before I’m wearing anything but tents.
You
might as well have some fun.”

I did talk her into a black-dyed mink headband, as well as a pair of new fawn evening gloves that she would want for New Year’s Eve. I bought two dresses, both of which needed to be altered and would be delivered to the house. But when I got to the window display of the children’s shop, I froze. It was filled with winter dresses: infant dresses with frothed lace and tiny matching bloomers, larger dresses in silver and bright pink and green, all with crinolines, and a simple red wool skater’s dress, covered with white embroidered snowflakes and white triangles inset around the skirt that would show only when the girl wearing it walked or skated. I couldn’t stop myself from staring at the skater’s dress. It would be just a little too big for Eva this winter, but it was so charming that I would have bought it to put away for next year.

Next year.

“What is it?” Rachel had dawdled in front of the jewelry concession next store, but caught up to me. After an awkward moment, she said “Let’s go eat. I’m hungry.”