Olivia (3 page)

"I don't know, Mommy. Please, I don't want to think about it. Please," she begged and started to sob again.
"We should know," I insisted. "Daddy should know and go see them."
"Maybe it's better we don't," Mother concluded, succumbing to Belinda's teary grimaces and wails. "What good is it going to do anyone now?"
"People should be responsible for their actions, Mother. Daddy's going to want to know," I added firmly. "I'm thirsty," Belinda moaned.
"All right, honey. All right. Olivia will get you some water."
"I need something colder, something with ice," she demanded.
"So go get it," I snapped.
"Olivia, please," Mother said, turning her soft eyes to me.
"We shouldn't be babying her now, Mother. She's done a terrible thing to all of us," I said, feeling abused too. Mother just held her gaze, pleading with her eyes. I turned and hurried out of the room and down the stairs.
Carmelita had finally been roused by the sound of the footsteps on the stairway and the activity above. She was a tall, very dark skinned, half-Portuguese, half-Negro woman, what we called a Brava on the Cape, and she had been working for our family for the last ten years. She was in her mid-forties, lean, with a narrow face and eyes the color of obsidian. Carmelita was the perfect maid and cook for our family because she was strong, efficient and discreet. She seemed to have no opinions about any of us and kept to herself when she wasn't working.
Her licorice-black hair was down to her shoulders when she emerged from her quarters to greet me. She was in her nightgown and robe.
"Is someone sick?" she asked.
"Belinda," I said.
"Oh. Is there anything I can do?"
"No thank you, Carmelita," I said. "I can take care of it," I said firmly. She fixed those dark eyes on my face for a moment and, expressionless, nodded and returned to her maid's quarters at the rear of the house. I knew she didn't believe-me, but even when I was just a young girl, Carmelita never challenged anything I told her.
When I was in the kitchen getting Belinda's drink, Daddy came in through the rear door off the pantry. He stood there a moment, his face streaked with sweat, his hands caked with dirt.
"It's done," he said. "How is it up there?" he asked, his eyes shifting toward the ceiling.
"Mother's with her. I'm just getting her a cold drink." Daddy nodded and looked at his smudged wrists and hands before looking back at me.
"You understand why I'm doing it this way, don't you, Olivia? The bottom line is it's the best way to protect the family."
"I understand, Daddy."
"She told you no one else knows about this?"
"That's what she said," I replied, not without a smirk of skepticism that Daddy chose to ignore.
"Good," he said. "Good."
"She won't tell me who the father is, however," I added. "She claims she doesn't know."
He shook his head.
"Maybe it's better. We can't go accusing someone and stir up a nest of hornets."
"Whoever it is, he shouldn't get away with it, Daddy."
"It's done and over," he said. "Let it all be buried," he added and then left to wash up before returning to see Belinda. Once again, I thought, my spoiled sister gets away with something terrible.
When I returned to Belinda's room with her water, I found Mother had her lying back
comfortably. I gave her the cold drink and she sipped it and smiled up at me.
"Thank you, Olivia. I'm sorry I put you through so much."
"Yes, you did," I said without flinching. She looked like she would burst into tears again and make Mother feel more terrible. "Just rest now, Belinda. You don't want to get seriously ill," I added mercifully. She changed her expression instantly to one of gratitude and then reached out to take my hand.
"You're my best sister," she said. I nearly laughed. "I'm your only sister, Belinda."
"I know, but you're so good to me."
"She is good to you. She's good to all of us," Mother said smiling at me. "What we all have to do now is get some rest."
"How can anyone sleep after this?" I muttered. If Mother heard, she chose to ignore me.
Daddy came to the door and looked in at us. "Well?" he asked.
"She's doing fine, Winston," Mother said.
"That's good. It's better we behave as if this didn't happen," he advised.
"You might as well pretend there's no ocean out there," I declared.
"Your father's right, Olivia. It won't do any good to talk about it, even amongst ourselves. Let's close our eyes and imagine it was a nightmare," she suggested.
It didn't surprise me to hear her say such a thing. It was the way Mother handled most of the unpleasantness in her life. Not even an event like this would be any different.
She leaned over to kiss Belinda who smiled at her, and then she left the room. Daddy stood there a moment gazing in at me, at the floor and then at Belinda.
"Everyone just go to sleep," he said and left.
I looked at Belinda. She offered me her small smile, but I just shook my head at her.
"I'm so tired, Olivia," she said. "I feel so weak inside, too, but I didn't want to alarm anyone. Daddy wouldn't want me to have to go to a doctor."
"You'll live," I said. "Just go to sleep."
I checked the room once more and then started out, pausing in the doorway to look back at her. She looked small, like a little girl again. In moments she was asleep.
I lay awake in my bed thinking not of Belinda, or of my parents. I thought about that dead infant whose spark of life went out so quickly and who was interred someplace on our grounds so soon afterward, he surely had no memory of ever being born into this family.
At the moment, I thought, he was the lucky one.
Belinda remained at home for the rest of the week. We told everyone she had the flu. I thought that Carmelita knew something far more serious had occurred. She brought Belinda her meals so she saw that Belinda wasn't coughing or sneezing. However, Mother pampered her and behaved as if our lies were really the truth. I heard her talking to her friends on the telephone, telling them how sick Belinda was.
"One day she was fine and the next, she was as sick as a dog," she rambled, describing the symptoms, even claiming she had phoned the doctor for instructions.
It all disgusted me. I was especially amazed at how quickly Daddy had adjusted to the facade he and Mother had created. The following morning he was up and dressed at his usual hour, already seated at the breakfast table, reading his newspaper as though the night before really had been just a bad dream. The only indication in his face was a quick but sharp look at me when Carmelita came into the dining room and inquired as to Belinda's health. That was when Mother went into her long, detailed explanation, pouring out her brook of bubbling white lies. Daddy looked pleased.
Since I had returned from finishing school, I had gone to work for him as an apprentice accountant. Daddy decided that it would be a waste to send me to some liberal arts college, "just to fill the time, until you find a decent and proper man to marry, Olivia. Any man you marry will appreciate you more for doing something practical," he added.
I wasn't excited about going to college anyway, and I had always been very good with numbers. Daddy claimed I had a good mind for business. He said he knew that even when I was just a little girl selling cranberries from our bog. I set up a stand on the street that ran by our property. Tourists thought it was sweet seeing a little girl behave so seriously about money. What impressed Daddy was that I took my money and had him put it into an interest-bearing savings account rather than spend it in the candy or toy stores.
"At least I have someone in the family to inherit my business," he declared. He had come to accept that he wouldn't have a son, but in time, I believed he no longer thought of me as an inferior substitute. He gave me too many compliments at the office for me to believe that.
Daddy was truly a self-made millionaire, a success story that illustrated the American dream: a small entrepreneur who made good business decisions and gradually but firmly built a bigger and bigger business. He was written up in many regional magazines and once in the Boston papers.
He had begun with a single fishing boat and then bought a second and a third. Before long, he had a fleet of vessels providing seafood for an evergrowing national market. He expanded into the canning of shrimp in Boston and built an impressive financial chain of related businesses, making the shrewd move to get a commanding interest in the trucking facilities so he could control his overhead. By his own admission, he was at times a ruthless businessman, smothering competition, dropping prices to drive them out of his territories. He became more and more influential in politics, picked up government contracts and continued to expand his reach and hold on his markets.
After less than six months, I knew our mother company inside and out, and Daddy even permitted me to sit in on some of his business meetings to listen and learn more. After they ended, he often turned to me to get my opinions, and a number of times, he took my advice.
Belinda, on the other hand, didn't know the first thing about our business. According to the way she behaved and thought, money came into our lives like rain. When we needed it, it was there, and there was never a drought, never a time when she ever heard the words, "We can't afford that, Belinda."
I often lectured her about being ungrateful and unappreciative.
"You take everything for granted as though it's owed to you," I accused.
She gave me that sweet smile of hers and shrugged. I could accuse her of murder and she would do the same. She rarely argued or denied anything. It was as if she believed she would be immune from responsibility and guilt, that she had been given some holy dispensation and could do whatever her little heart desired, no matter what the consequences.
It was even true now, I thought disgustedly, with our parents claiming it was better to pretend nothing happened. Belinda just had the flu. I almost believed Daddy had convinced himself he hadn't buried a premature infant.
The day after when I returned from the office, I wandered out behind our house, curious as to whether I could find the unmarked grave site. Our land behind the house ran nearly a full acre before it reached the cliff that looked out over the Atlantic Ocean. It was a sharp descent to the rocky beach below. There were some safe pathways that led down to the small private beach we had, only a clam shell's toss away. Our yard had sprawling maples and some oak trees, and a large part of it remained uncultivated. Poison ivy grew among the brambles and wild roses and more than once, Belinda had wandered too close, suffering the results for weeks after.
A large lawn was bordered by crocus clusters, Emperor tulips, jonquils and daffodils. There was a gazebo and a pond with benches around it, and I found it so restful to sit there and look out to sea.
Sometimes, I would walk out to the edge of the cliff and watch the tide, mesmerized by the rhythmic movement of the waves, the breakers, the spray shooting up from the rocks, listening to the seagulls scream as they plummeted for clams. I would go to the very edge and close my eyes. I could feel my body sway as if it were tempted to fly off the cliff and crash on the rocks below.
When she was younger, Belinda was frightened by the ocean. She was not fond of sailing, hated the danger of man-of-wars and the smell of seaweed. She rarely, if ever, went hunting for driftwood. The only reason she could see for going to the beach was to have a party and then to stay far enough away from the water so as not to even be sprayed by the waves crashing against the shore. Once, when I was nine and she was seven, I took her out to the edge of the cliff with me and asked her to close her eyes. It frightened her so much she turned and ran back to the house. I thought about that now and wondered what I would have done if she had fallen.
Jerome had just finished doing some weeding when I stepped out back to find the grave. He nodded and headed for the shed. With my arms folded across my body, I walked as casually as I could down the slate rock pathway, my eyes flitting from side to side, searching for signs of dirt that had been disturbed. I walked all the way out to the edge of the cliff without seeing anything. Where could Daddy have put the carton and other things? It wouldn't be just a little hole, would it?
I went around toward the maples and paused when I thought I had found an area under one of the trees that looked like it had been dug up. I stepped closer and when I knelt and inspected the ground, I decided this was the place. It put a shudder in me and I rose as if I expected the dead infant to cry for help, even with its muted voice.
Years later, I would come here again and find the place overgrown, but in the midst of the crab grass and flat emerald weeds, would be a patch of juniper swaying in the ocean wind, reminding me of that horrible night.
At the moment I was angry about it, though. I didn't like feeling creepy and morose. I didn't like burying Belinda's sins because I didn't like lies. When you lie, I thought, you make yourself vulnerable and weak. Daddy was a much weaker man in my eyes because of what he had done, though I was sure that he had his nightmares, too.
I fled from the spot, hating Belinda for putting us all in this horrible place.
Daddy should have made Belinda suffer her consequences and not leave her to be pampered upstairs all week, I thought. I believed he would never bring it up again, but he surprised me one night toward the end of that week. He was in his den going over the family accounts when I walked by and he called to me.
"Close the door, Olivia," he ordered as soon as I entered. I did so and then turned to him. He sat behind his desk stiffly. "We've got to put all this behind us, Olivia. I notice you've been different all this week, looking at me as if you expected me to say or do something more."
"I don't mean to be your conscience, Daddy," I said and he winced as though I had spit at him. "I'm sorry. It's just hard for me to pretend nothing happened."
"Listen to me, Olivia. The most important quality is loyalty. Every family is a world unto itself and every member of that little world must protect it at any cost. Only then can individual liberty, interests and talents be pursued. Build the family first, Olivia. The only rule for morality is what's good for the family is good," he said, his eyes firm. "It's the lesson my father taught me and the lesson I hope you will take to heart.
"Among ourselves, we can criticize and regret, but we have to put it aside when it threatens the family. It's the credo I live by, Olivia. It's the only flag I salute and the only cause for which I will give my life."