The House of Closed Doors (2 page)

“You are causing terrible distress to your dear mother, Miss Nell,” was her only reply, her missing bottom tooth causing the sibilants to hiss and lisp. “You always were a terrible willful child, and now look! See what shame you are bringing on us all. Can’t you tell us, now, even just what sort of person this,” she hesitated, “gentleman may be?”

“Bet,” my mother’s voice hardened into the tone she used when her servants‌—‌of however long standing‌—‌forgot their place. “Have Marie make tea for both of us and buttered toast for Miss Nell. Now, please.”

Bet sniffed, but very quietly. My dainty invalid mother somehow managed to exact absolute obedience from her servants, whom she ruled through the love they had for her and controlled by the tiniest changes in her faintly lined brow and her small, delicately pursed mouth.

Bet turned to leave, shooting another of her looks in my direction as she did so. I suspected there would be another talking-to later on, when she got me alone in my room. It would not work. I could resist Bet’s bluster and bombast far better than I could my mother’s gentle remonstrances.

As the door closed behind Bet, my mother looked directly at me. She was everything I wasn’t: petite, ladylike, and still very pretty for her thirty-eight years, with her pale blonde hair and slim, narrow-waisted figure. People loved her. I loved her. My father had loved her so much that he had died for her.

She raised her eyebrows, and I shook my head again.

“I will not say, Mama. I do not wish to marry him.”

“Is he so very unsuitable?”

I thought hard, searching for a way to reassure her I had not been with the butcher’s boy or a stable hand and yet not give any hint as to who it might have been.

“He is suitable in the eyes of the world, but not in my eyes, Mama. I do not wish to tie myself to him for life.”

“You would rather be an unwed mother? Merciful Heaven, Nell! That is the end for you socially.”

I twiddled one of my bronze-red curls, still waving around my shoulders because Bet hadn’t spared me the time to put my hair up before she dragged me downstairs. I liked it this way. When it was twisted and prodded into submission on top of my head, it was a heavy nuisance, and I was always having to poke escaping curls back into the mass.

“I have never cared too much about society, Mama. And the society of Victory is not exactly extensive.”

“Our town is growing fast, Nell,” said my mother reprovingly. “Since the War ended, we have seen so many new people, some of them even from the Confederate states. Doreen Ahern, you know, has engaged a‌—‌a‌—‌
colored
servant from Chicago!” Her voice had dropped to a whisper, and the sentence ended in a scandalized squeak. The town of Victory was composed of almost equal parts Irish, German, and Scandinavian blood, and a dark-skinned person of any rank had been a rare sight until the War had brought its changes and peace an inrush of new people. Mama was right: In this year of our Lord 1870 Victory was a growing, prosperous place.

She cleared her throat and resumed her lecture. “My dear Hiram says that Victory is excellently situated, poised as it is between the great city of Chicago, the golden fields of grain, the dairylands of Wisconsin, and the lake. And such an excellent road!”

Her voice grew strident as she parroted my stepfather’s political rhetoric. In point of fact, Victory was sixty miles from the lake and well away from the corridor of towns that had pushed up like a string of mushrooms in a direct line from Chicago to the Wisconsin border. Still, it was true that after two years of bullying its prominent citizens for subscriptions, Victory‌—‌called Greenersville before the heady celebrations of the Union triumph over the slave-masters‌—‌was about to receive a railroad station.

To me, Victory was an eventless desert in which I did not wish to be marooned.

My mother’s eyes had focused on me again and taken on a calculating look. I surmised this was one of the good days when the fog her illness spread over her mind lifted for a while. “Bet says you are five months gone, Nell,” she said flatly. “Then it happened in May, did it not?”

I stared at the curl wound around my fingers. “I do not wish to discuss the matter, Mama,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. My heart raced, and I had just one thought:
Please, Mama, do not remember who visited us in May.

I
was saved by Bet’s reentrance with the tea tray. It was a strange time of day to be drinking tea, but Mama was not at home to visitors until one o’clock, and tea, in a house still dominated by Grandmama’s traditions, was regarded as medicinal and well suited to any crisis. I avoided Bet’s gaze as she lowered the tray onto the table by the fire and watched as she poked at the burning logs in an effort to warm up the chill October morning.

Bet straightened up as a thought seemed to strike her, the poker clutched in her right hand like St. Michael’s sword.

“Madam,” she waved the hot end of the poker in my direction, “am I right in assuming that Miss Nell will no longer participate in receiving visitors?”

The corners of my mother’s mouth turned down in quite a comically childish fashion, and she patted her hair absentmindedly. “Dear me, Bet, you are right.” Her eyes widened, and she stared at me, horrified. “Supposing someone has already guessed?”

“I’d not worry, Madam,” said Bet. “Miss Nell has been careful to hold her shawl just so.” She clattered the poker back into the fire-iron holder and left the room. I distinctly heard “No flies on that one, to be sure” drifting on the breeze behind her.

“Nell,” said my mother, “you will kindly remain in your room during visiting hours from now on, and you will not leave the house. I will give out that you are suffering from the influenza‌—‌or the shingles‌—‌or something infectious so that no one will ask to visit you.”

Knowing how vague my mother’s mind could be at times, I fervently hoped that she would decide on one disease and stick with it. But I dipped my head obediently, said “Yes, Mama,” and accepted the proffered cup of tea. I tore through the buttered toast as speedily as decorum allowed and made my escape to my bedroom before my mother could revert to the question of the timing of my pregnancy. Fortunately, Mama had to get ready for her daily visit to her friend Ruth, so she had other things on her mind.

Marie had made my bed and tidied my room. As I entered, she had just finished dusting the mantelpiece; her large black eyes grew round as she noticed my belly, and a small reddened hand flew to her mouth. She looked about to speak but found nothing to say.

“Thank you, Marie,” I said as briskly as I could. “I won’t need you again today‌—‌except, I suppose, to help me with my hair later.” We kept a very small domestic establishment, a habit left over from Mama’s long widowhood, and Marie was a true maid-of-all-work.

Marie bobbed her sketchy version of a curtsey, said “Yes, Miss Nell” in a tone somewhere between hilarity and horror, and flew downstairs to gossip with Bet. No guessing who would be the main subject.

I sank gratefully into the armchair by the window. So, my secret was out. I stared down at the bulge of my belly and wondered how this would all end. Not, please God, in marriage.

I closed my eyes and once again saw the May sunlight making the pale new leaves glow, and a warm feeling spread through certain regions of my body. Admittedly, there was one aspect of marriage that had potential for enjoyment. I reopened my eyes quickly, shocked by the thought that marriage could have any attractions at all and by my own wantonness in deriving even the least pleasure from the memory of that day.

I was beginning to understand the distinctions between flirtation, love, and what Bet always referred to, mysteriously, as “relations.” I wished to God that she, and all the women who had surrounded me in the seventeen years of my life, had been less mysterious and explained to me what “relations” were so that I could have put a stop to matters before they went that far. But I had been far more innocent than my flirtatious manner suggested, and therein lay my doom.

TWO

I
shook my head to drive the thought of that day in May from my mind and looked out the window. My room was at the front of the house, but the view offered little entertainment. We lived on one of the quietest streets in Victory; like my life, it led nowhere.

At least, to no place frequented by the affluent merchants, professional men, and minor gentlefolk who formed my own social class. The neat row of houses, flanked by roses and zinnias that were still displaying the occasional bright bloom, gave way eventually to some plainer abodes whose yards were rank with every flower that grew in our hot summers. Beyond them stretched open prairie dotted with patches of woodland and then endless miles of crops.

But it was not toward the fields that I stared that bright, cold October morning. I felt my lips curve upward into a smile as I spotted a flash of hair so blond as to be almost white, about ten houses along in the opposite direction.

Martin Rutherford had removed his hat to two women, both young‌—‌or trying to be young‌—‌if their ruffles and bows were anything to go by. He was listening to their chatter, bending his tall frame to catch their words. I could see the movement of his head as he threw it back in laughter and surmised that some degree of flirtation was proceeding. My smile grew broader. It would not work; Martin was just as averse to marriage as I was but for different reasons.

I flew to the bell-pull. Within ten minutes Marie had twisted and pushed my hair into some semblance of decency, and another glance from the window had shown that the conversation had ended and Martin, with less heaviness in his step than I had seen recently, was walking toward our house.

I snatched one of my prettier shawls from my armoire and hurried downstairs as noiselessly as possible. I might not see Martin for months; I could not resist the opportunity to tease him one last time.

H
e saw me slip out of the front door and close it cautiously behind me. Bet, I hoped, was still in the kitchen at the rear of the house. Heaven knows what she would have done if she’d seen me outside, now that she knew of my condition. I hitched my shawl into a position where it both warmed me and concealed my torso and smiled at Martin as he slipped the latch on our gate. It was an action I had seen him perform thousands of times since I was a little girl. He had grown from the slender boy of my earliest memories to resemble an ascetic Viking warrior who had abandoned his beard and pagan ways for the monastery. The impression was reinforced by his height, the squareness of his face‌—‌clean-shaven in disdain of the fashion for whiskers‌—‌and his beaky nose.

“Well, and how is the youth of Victory today?” Martin tipped his hat to me and bowed his white-blond head in mock tribute. “You are blooming, Nell, positively blooming.”

I glanced instinctively downward, aware that my appearance of radiant good health was due to the extra pounds on my normally skinny frame. The shawl was nicely in place. “Keep your voice down, please, Martin,” was my reply. “I‌—‌well, I have had a bit of a falling out with Bet, and she’s sure to make trouble if she finds me talking with you.”