Manroot (15 page)

She served a hot lemon tea with fresh cinnamon rolls.
She stirred her tea, ate a bun, yet still did not speak. Finally, she held forth a square cardboard note.

“
It’s the Missus’ birth announcements. She had twin boys!” Her face glowed with euphoria.

Katherine took the card, drew in a sharp breath, then carefully read the announcement:
twin boys named Ryan and Kyle Reardon. With relief she said, “I didn’t know the Missus was expecting.”

Hannah looked down, not wanting to meet her eyes.
“Most didn’t. She wanted to keep it a secret, after the other times when her two sons died – or I guess I should say, they never lived. Both were stillborn.”

“
Oh, I see.”

Hannah continued:
“Tom’s in town buying drinks for everyone. It’s the Judge’s treat. I thought you had such a nice hand, maybe you could help me address the cards.”

“
Oh yes, ma’am, I’d be glad to.”

“
There’s no use in calling me ma’am, so formal-like. Just Hannah will be fine.”

They finished their tea, and Hannah prepared a place in the library.
It was the first time Katherine had seen the other rooms in the house. She knew – but did not know how she knew – the green room upstairs. If pressed, she could describe every stick of furniture and everything in the room.

They sat by the large marble fireplace, each with their list.
Hannah felt better now that someone was in the house with her. It had been a strange time – the day the birds had gathered and chattered, and those two babies had been found floating down the creek like Moses. Something out of the ordinary was happening. Tom had warned her not to be a silly gossiping woman; he had put the money in the bank and said that the Judge and the Missus deserved their loyalty. There was more talk of which acreage they would be getting.

“
Where are they now?” Katherine asked. She realized she had unconsciously been listening for the cry of babies.

“
Oh, they’re still in the hospital in St. Louis. They have to stay another week. It seems that one boy needed minor surgery, but it was nothing serious.”

The Judge and his Missus had a wide circle of acquaintances.
The women wrote the names plain and put stamps on the announcements. Tom would be going back to town to mail them in the morning.

“
Workmen are coming tomorrow, to fix and paper the rooms,” Hannah confided. “Each boy is havin’ his own room. Seems the Missus got upset, for the Judge wouldn’t give up the green room. Kinda silly, as that room’s not special, but he wouldn’t hear of it. I can’t wait to see what fancy fittens she bought. The decorators from Scruggs, Vandervoots, and Barney in St. Louis will be out, too. The Missus, she wants the best of everything for her sons. Seems a nurse will be coming back with ‘em, to care for ‘em. Good thing, really. Tom said they can’t be expectin’ nursemaid care, too. I’m only the housekeeper.”

They addressed the cards and talked, and the do
g walked back and forth from the kitchen, as if expecting someone.

Hannah held up a card.
“This here Mrs. Brookshire, she’s the Missus’ sister living way up in Cincinnati. Sad, she’s a widow with a new baby – little girl named April.”

While the h
ousekeeper was busy chattering small talk, the secret in her fluttered and wished to be said out loud, but she remembered Tom’s words and the Reardons’ summoning them to the library for Tom and she to lay their hands on the Bible and swear that the secret would remain locked in their breast, and from that day on she made herself believe the lie… “What a miracle, after all this time and two stillborn sons lying in the churchyard, our Mrs. Reardon has been blessed with two healthy sons.”

Hannah looked for eve
ry reason to ask Katherine up to the house. Truth was, she didn’t like being there alone. The owl that had been by the kitchen window came back each night, and she didn’t like it, not one bit. She was a sensible, sane woman without much imagination, but an uneasiness clung to her; she felt better with people in the house. She loved the workmen running up the stairs, stopping in the kitchen for mugs of hot coffee. She even liked the effeminate man with the paisley scarf who put on airs and ran around with sketches under his arm – he brought his own tea, a special blend from China. He used her water, and with all the excitement, she didn’t have much time to think.

Katherine became acquainted with the large, twelve-room house.
She saw Elizabeth’s vanity in all the fine possessions; she worried that the babies would join the ranks of things Elizabeth owned, but it was far better than to wonder your life through, and make up stories of gypsies and stolen children. She knew now and forever her son…
why did she always think of him as one?
Her sons were Reardons: the small, expensive announcements said they were.

The work was finished in a week, and on Friday, 5 December 1941, the twins came home to Hilltop accompanied by a nanny who would not let anyone near
them.

Chapter 16

Two days later, the air around Castlewood and the surrounding county came alive with the shriek of sirens, and church bells rang
– each bell blending with another over the Missouri foothills. They rang incessantly and did not quit. Their frantic sound sent Katherine running down the hill to the house.

Hannah, crying, answered the door.
“It’s the war. Listen, we’re at war,” and she scooped Katherine in and they sat by the radio. “It’s President Roosevelt. We’re at war. Japan has attacked American troops at Pearl Harbor.”

It was two weeks after that horrendous day that Frieda came.
She had hired a cab all the way to Castlewood…she even made it wait! First, she stopped at the big house, but Hannah sent her up the hill to the cabin. Katherine answered the door to her. She grabbed her and hugged her, and the older woman allowed this. “Katherine…I can’t stay. I’ve a cab waitin’.”

“
A cab?”

“
Yes. I had to bring you this letter that came for you, and ask if you want to go with me to St. Louis. They’re hiring men, women, and boys to work in the war plants. Why, Ama Tarp in St. Louis have already hired me. They make torpedoes – pay good money. It’s a chance to be a person…no one’s servant no more.” She reached up and touched her barren ears, where the cameos no longer glittered. “I left ‘em behind. Women, we sell ourselves too cheap. We shouldn’t have had to sell ourselves at all, but times were hard.”

Katherine knew
what she was saying, but she heard a different drummer. She heard the beat of her sons’ hearts and knew she couldn’t leave them. Someday they would need her, and so would William. She had not sold herself to William. She belonged to him…and he to her. “I can’t go. I really don’t want to go,” she told the older woman.

Frieda knew the girl was different from most.
She looked around the cabin. It belonged to a different time – but then so did Katherine. She looked down at the letter that the young woman now held. “Aren’t you gonna open it?”

Katherine saw her father
’s scrawled handwriting and felt relieved that he wasn’t down there, caught on a branch in the river. Nevertheless she lifted the grating on the stove and fed the letter to the fire, which licked hungrily at the edges and soon devoured the paper.

She didn
’t need to know; her destiny was here, she knew that now.

The war and talk of the war made Tom restless. He heard of lucrative work in town, in the factories, yet because of the promise of the land that would someday be his, he stayed at Hilltop. Resentment boiled a cauldron within him, and he began stealing fifty dollars a week out of the grocery money. It was too much; babies and a nanny, and now Bruce the dummy had been released from the hospital. Because of the Judge’s generosity to others, a blind man would soon be stumbling around Hilltop, and because of the woman in the cabin, the blind man would be in the house! It was too much. He dreamed of blackmailing the Judge. He knew he wouldn’t do it, but he felt so angry. All this fuss – decorators, announcements, lies and more lies – because of two bastard brats, floating in the creek. If Hannah hadn’t seen them, and if that damned dog hadn’t kicked up such a row, he would have let them float. He enjoyed the thought…one more mile on the river and they would have been at the mercy of the current, sucked in and down. It wasn’t fair! Hannah and he had been faithful servants…and now two bastards had moved in and taken over. When he laid the fire in the Judge’s study, he saw all the legal papers that lied. Someday if he got mad enough, or drunk enough, he’d tell. The hell with it. They had everything, and Hannah and he were relegated to the kitchen.

It wasn
’t four months later that the nanny quit, and Elizabeth Reardon frantically called the agencies, only to be told there wasn’t anyone who wanted domestic work. The women were all in the war-plants making fabulous money.

That was the day she sent for Katherine!

Chapter 17

After degrading lessons in hygiene and much fuss over the fitting of uniforms, Elizabeth gave up. The black uniform looked like a French maid’s – in it even the plain girl looked seductive – and the white one was too much like a nurse’s uniform. She didn’t want anyone to think her sons frail! The pastel ones resembled those worn by waitresses in the fast-food restaurants that were springing up everywhere. No, none of these would do.

Instead, Tom took them into town, and in St. Louis Elizabeth selected Katherine
’s wardrobe of plain dresses, skirts, and blouses. She had to look decent. When they went anywhere with the children, their nanny had to look ordinary and not stand out. Satisfied at last, they returned to Hilltop. It was five months since Katherine had seen her sons.

The boys had adjacent nurseries with interconnecting doors.
Each room contained a maple canopy crib, one with blue fabric, the other with green. Each room had a rocker, bassinet, and chest of drawers; already a year too soon the rooms were fitted with elaborate hobby horses, toyboxes brimming with plush teddy bears and wind-up toys of every description.

Elizabeth
chattered incessantly as they climbed the curved staircase to the nurseries. Katherine followed on legs that felt like rubber. So many times during those early months, she had sat with Hannah in the kitchen and heard their cries somewhere in the house: it had taken all of her strength to resist them, to block them out. She had wanted to run to them then, as she wanted to now. She had pictured them so often in her mind, their dear little faces, yet she did not really know what to expect. She had parted with two tiny newborns, but what would they look like at five months old?

Elizabeth
showed her to a small room that was alongside the nurseries – this would be hers. It was only when she heard the final click of the door closing, leaving her alone, that Katherine found the courage to tiptoe to the crib.

Her heart leapt to her throat with happiness.
The child lay on his side, one plump thumb still caught in his rosebud lips. He stirred, and his pink cheeks moved with the motion of sucking, only to stop after a moment, deep in sweet sleep once more. She had to hold him, it had been so long.

She reached for the precious bundle.
He squirmed slightly until he settled into her, and she felt the faint, quiet rhythm of his heart beating against hers. She caressed the firmness of her baby’s body and thrilled as she ran her cupped hand over the yellow down of his perfect head; it felt like a peach not yet ripe. Holding her cherished child she tiptoed to the next room.

Shifting awkwardly, she lifted the second sleeping baby.
Alike, they were so alike! Even their closed lashes were blond against their fair cheeks. William lived in these miniature faces, the stamp of the nose, the curve of the mouth, the high broad forehead. Oh, they were beautiful, her babies. God, how she had missed them.

Lowering herself into the rocker, she rocked slowly and hummed quietly to the sleeping babies.
The emotion was exquisite. She was filled to the brim with love and happiness, and she gathered their warmth closer, reminding herself not to hold them too tightly.

It was either their touch or her deep emotion which created it, for later she noticed the stain on her dress.
Her milk had dried up months ago, but now it was as if her breasts yearned to feed them. Her milk flowed, but she knew she must not feed them that way, it would be too dangerous. She would bind herself, hide the tell-tale stains, for no one must know.

When the babies awoke she undressed them, for she needed to see
the perfection of their limbs and reassure herself that her sons were perfect. Gratefully she saw that they were.

Over and over she caressed the velvet of their skins, cooing softly to them, and only when she rang Hannah to bring up their warm bottles did
she remember.

She offered the bottle to the first baby and saw that he had two tiny teeth just breaking through his bottom gum.
Then the second child anxiously took his bottle, and he had only one small tooth. Both of their upper gums were smooth, no sign of any teeth.

The Judge had hired the most skillful surgeon money could buy.
Neither child had a noticeable scar where the teeth had been removed. She would never know which one. She tried to imagine that it had never been! They took to her, and she nursed them through colic and other childhood discomforts; she loved them both with a fierce, protective love. She was happy, and these were the times when she could forget her grandmother’s warnings that some were born under an unlucky star.

The Judge doted on
the infants, but his work kept him away a great deal of the time. He bought the swim club at Castlewood, as the owner joined the army. He now owned land and fields for almost twenty miles square. He knew she was their mother, and sometimes in the quiet nursery as she rocked them, he thanked her with his eyes. Yet she was strange to him. Their love had been another place, another time, and he could scarce imagine that he had lain with her and loved her so. It was the other that became more real; he no longer worried or wondered about it. It came like a dream, and if that is what it was, so be it… Time stood still in that place, and she laughed and loved and chattered in his ear, and sometimes when he awoke he could still hear her singing in a voice that he had only heard in the boat on the river with the mallards flying overhead in a V. It was a hallucination or illusion; whatever it was, it was more real to him at times than his waking life. And in truth, he aged, but there in that place, he did not.