Keeping Secrets (21 page)

“That's all right as long as you're not preoccupied with other women.”

“How could I be? It takes all I've got just keeping you satisfied.”

“That hasn't seemed of major concern lately,” I said, and turned away from him. I wasn't really mad. I just wanted to see whether he'd come after me. The feel of his lambent fingers up my spine and around my breasts brought a small smile of triumph to my face.

Emory's behavior was a great deal more civilized for the next couple of months, and he cut back to his more normal consumption of whiskey, even then so considerable I stopped wondering why he should blow up every time he read something new on the growing movement of the Anti-Saloon League toward national prohibition. Still he was a man relatively at peace, since Barrista finally had taken the helm in Mexico. There was probably never a time prior to that when I was more tempted to relieve my own burden onto his shoulders, because the truth was that I could no longer handle it alone.

Mark's letters since the receipt of the proceeds from the emerald ring had been increasingly frequent and nasty. It seemed to me that the larger the payment I made, the more apt he was to press for more immediately. Perhaps he thought Emory and I came into money sporadically—that was likely, considering the uneven pattern of my ability to forward him money—and that he would take as much as he could get while it lasted.

Several of his letters made reference to the “little business deal” I had turned down with Richard Boscomb, and one said, “If you could let a good chance like that slip by, you must not be having as hard a time gettin' your hands on cash as you said.”

There was also the hint that he was laying the groundwork for blackmail, for he began to include such phrases as “You know, it kinda seems like I been through an awful lot to get this money. It don't really seem fair, over what must be about like a handful of change to someone in your class. I kinda think somewhere along the way there ought to be an extra bonus.…”

I wrote him a note ignoring the new threats, and saying I could not send him more just now, but would forward the balance due him within a few months. The promise was total fallacy, of course, except for the wishful thought contained in it. I wadded it up and threw it away, then thought again and burned it in the stove. I went upstairs, pulled out Richard Boscomb's material again, and looked it over, then put it back into the drawer.

By that time my nerves were in such a state that a letter from Mark could put me near hysterics, and there were many times when the unexpected appearance of Nathan at home during the day, to pick up an item from his desk or tend to something else, would startle me so I would jump as though I had seen a ghost.

24

Around ten o'clock on a morning in late September, Woody's neighbor Mrs. Hormby rang the doorbell. “Do you know where Mr. Woodstone is?”

“If he isn't at home, I have no idea. Why?”

“I've been hearing Scoop bark since I got up at five this morning—off and on, you know—and finally I went next door to see if anything was wrong. No one answers. Do you suppose he went out of town and left the little dog alone?”

“Of course not.” I followed Mrs. Hormby down the street toward Woody's house, more fearful with every step. When we came in view of the house I could see Scoop, first at one window then another, barking, tail wagging. Seeing me, he scratched against the glass.

I circled around to the back door of Woody's house and knocked, while Mrs. Hormby, aware, I think, of what might possibly have happened, stood reluctantly by the front gate.

Woody's bedroom was at the back of the second floor, so the only thing left to do was go through a window and see if he was all right. I found a kitchen window unlocked, and climbed in. At once, Scoop was jumping on me, yelping hysterically. He wouldn't let me pick him up, but ran instead to the foot of the stairs and stood barking. I took a deep breath and followed him up.

I don't know exactly how long Woody had been dead. He'd apparently gone in his sleep, peacefully. There was a book of English poetry, spine up, at his side. On the table near his bed was the picture of smiling Johnny in his uniform. Not having been this close to death before, I would not have believed I could feel so uncertain upon seeing it. I touched his hand and called softly, “Woody?” Then I moved away and raised the back of my hand to my mouth. Scoop kept yelping and scratching at my legs, until finally I came out of my daze and grabbed him up. But he needed a conveyor, that was all, and leaped right from my arms onto the bed, sniffed around Woody, climbed up on his chest, and licked his face, then quietly scrambled down and lay beside him. He glanced up at me as if he sought an explanation.

I stood watching him, unable to move. In a moment he went to the end of the bed to the lump of his master's feet and lay down again, his head resting across them, ears perked, eyes still curious.

I held the stair rail tightly as I walked back down, then remembered Mrs. Hormby and opened the front door. She remained stationed at the gate. “Do you know his doctor?” I called.

Her eyes were as wide as Scoop's. “Is he alive?”

“No.”

“I think I have the doctor's name written down. He treated my husband once.” She scurried down the walk, no doubt relieved at having a purpose, and I went back in to wait. Scoop neither made another sound nor came down the stairs. I sat for what seemed a long time in my usual place, across from Woody's chair, and thought about all the times we'd sat together with music from the Victrola making interludes between the words we shared. He had regarded me almost as a special child. He never quizzed me on my schooling, or my bringing-up. He didn't know where I had been before he came to know me, and I had never told him, although several times I had come close. It would have made no more difference than the fact the annuals in his garden had to be dug up and replanted each year. In his view, each day one started from the beginning to learn something new. With me he simply started from scratch. He was the only real friend I ever had. By the time the doctor knocked at the door, my eyes were filled with tears.

At Woody's funeral there were people I recognized, though I had never met them; people who lived in the bigger, finer houses of the neighborhood that I had seen alighting from their automobiles or talking to one another in their dooryards. There were people who lived elsewhere in the city, and drove Packards and custom-made automobiles up to the curb of the church. They wore fine clothing and had their names linked to the best clubs and cultural societies. Their pictures often appeared in the paper. They did not speak to me.

There were probably near two hundred people at the service, and more floral remembrances than I had ever seen in one gathering. It all seemed so queer, when he had been so often alone, that all of these people should have known him well enough to attend his funeral. Of all the times his genuineness had struck me, I had never been more aware of it than on that day. His remarks about the people who'd been his students, and his social friends from all the literary and musical and art clubs that registered his and Elizabeth's names, came back to me, sitting in the pew. I felt very much alone and out of place among them, and felt that having lost this lifeline Woody had offered me when we first met, I was no longer a part of anything he claimed. Yet it wasn't his way of life I would miss. It was Woody himself.

“He was an old man; his death was inevitable,” said Emory when we spoke of him at dinner, then he shrugged and added, “I tried several times to save you from this.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told you not to become involved with him—or tried to give you a subtle hint.”

“You ‘hinted' that I shouldn't take sides in that god-forsaken war overseas. Well, that had nothing to do with my friendship with Woody. Maybe you can turn your feelings for people on and off, like a faucet, but I can't.”

“I'm surprised you haven't learned to by now.…”

“I'll tell you what killed Woody. It was that war. It took from him the only person he had, and that killed him. He would have been around long enough to see his grandson again, one day, if the kid had not been massacred.”

Emory turned around, furious. “What do you expect me to do about the war? You seem to believe it's my fault.”

I wanted to tell him it sure wasn't a British gun that put an end to Johnny's life, but I stopped myself just in time. It wouldn't have helped Woody.

Finally Emory put his hands on my shoulders from behind. “I'm sorry … believe it or not, I try so confounded hard to save you from being hurt. It never seems to turn out that way, though,” he said, and squeezed my shoulders, then walked off.

He refused when I asked if we could keep Scoop permanently, but agreed to let me care for the dog until I could find him a home. I think he felt far worse about the war in Europe than he would admit, and didn't want a constant reminder around of a casualty he'd been even vicariously responsible for.

I decided to offer Scoop to Camille Devera—I'd seen her lately while I was helping to serve the hungry soldiers at the railroad station. She might enjoy the little dog, being a young single girl without much social life, judging from all the little odd jobs she took on. Yet that could wait. In the meantime, Scoop knew me better than anyone else, and I was more than happy to have him around for company. The will found among Woody's papers in a bank vault was dated more than ten years previous. Everything in the Woodstone estate passed first to Johnny, and in the event he didn't survive Woody (that must have seemed a remote possibility then!), the estate went to Johnny's mother, the militant suffragette. I couldn't see her coming all the way over here to pick up a dog. The way things were overseas, she could not even catch a steamer to arrive in time for the reading of the will.

An inventory would have to be taken to arrive at the worth of the whole estate, and until this could be arranged, the house was to be locked, and left with all its possessions intact. I learned this one morning from two official-looking men whom I saw at Woody's house while passing by.

That afternoon I sat alone, stroking Scoop and thinking of all Woody left behind … all the things he treasured so.… Suddenly an idea occurred to me which I dismissed almost as quickly, despising myself for entertaining it even for a second.

But then in the night, lying in bed, I thought of it again. I still owed Mark more than ten thousand dollars, and short of asking Emory for it, which I could never do, I simply could not pay it. In the very near future Mark would appear and I would have to go away with him, as he had threatened in the beginning. Then my life would go into reverse and I would start down into the quagmire that had gripped me from the moment I took up with Mark so long ago.

Woody would not have wanted that. He would rather have helped me than to let that happen, surely, if he were as much my friend as he seemed to be. So if I took just one.…

No, I couldn't. To steal would be the same as to arrange my own admission back into what I was trying to escape. Yet … from whom would I be stealing? Someone who didn't care about Woody, who never even wrote to him as she paraded around England as a militant crusader, destroying property.…

Destroying. She had destroyed the property of others—crashing windows, setting fires—without a care as to its value. Yet she would get all that Woody had cared for so tenderly, then left behind, as soon as she could take a short leave from her “work” and come over here to fetch it.

Oh, it was wrong, I knew as I rose and dressed, and no amount of rationalizing would make it right. But maybe I could somehow, someday, make up for this one last plunge into transgression … someday … when I was rid of Mark, and Emory's problems were over and life was normal.…

Right now I wouldn't allow myself to think about it, but do it before I lost courage.

When I returned from Woody's house I felt very unsettled about what I had seen and done, and whether I should have gone still further than I did. All things considered, I knew I should not feel bad about having taken the small vase from the shelf of his breakfront, yet I did. It was so odd—Emory had been right. I made myself a whiskey and water, and sat down in the dark sitting room to try to calm my nerves and get my thoughts together.

After a few sips of the drink I began to relax somewhat, and to think way back over the years, about how easy it had always been to take what was not mine. Curiously, the first time I remembered stealing was the day Emory left Childers, and I took food from my Aunt Eartha's cupboard. I did not think it was wrong to take the food; in fact I was even proud of myself because I was doing it for Emory. I didn't have to tell myself sneaking from my aunt was all right; it came naturally to take what I could get, to make up for the feeling of loneliness and emptiness that comes from being an unwanted kid.

After that, as I grew older, it was still always easy, and there was always a handy reason, regardless of what the property was or who it belonged to. Even the last time.…

Tonight was no different from any other at first. I had thought it out, rationalized something that was dreadfully wrong into something right because it suited my need. Then, as though in a kind of hypnotic state, I had gone through with it. No one saw me as I slipped in and out of the house where I had received so much kindness over the past few years from a man who never asked anything in return and even, after death, continued to offer more.…

Until tonight I had always managed to slough off aspersions people might cast on my character, never letting them get under my skin. But now, at last, I saw myself from the inside out and felt rotten all the way through. I had to make this up to Woody, and I would, and free myself of Mark into the bargain.

Lyla's cousin Gregory Brandon and his new wife, Elissa, rented Woody's house once the estate was being processed for settlement. All of his beloved antiques and paintings, his old Victrola and stack of classical records, his books, his wingback chair and all other furniture—everything I had seen but not taken—were hauled away in a van to be inventoried, then stored until after the war when his daughter would supposedly come to claim them.