Those Harper Women (16 page)

“What prompted this message?”

“Just a little, simple—request for a favor, that's all! Just a favor I asked of her, Granny! And that was her answer—it's fun at the Ritz! Oh, Granny!” Suddenly she closes her eyes tight shut and pounds the heels of her palms on the edge of the table. “Just a favor! Oh, damn!” Her eyelids blink rapidly, and she bites her lower lip hard. “Sorry,” she says. “Blew up, I guess.” Edith watches her as she fumbles in her pack for a cigarette.

“Which Ritz is she at?” Edith asks finally.

“Paris. She's there for the collections.” Blowing out cigarette smoke, she says, “Maybe I'll do that—fly over and have fun at the Ritz.”

“Oh, don't leave me yet!”

“I'm joking. She has Poo with her.”

“Poo for the collections? How ridiculous.”

Edith stands up and walks to Leona's chair. Standing behind her, she places one hand on Leona's shoulder. Quietly, she says, “Can you tell me, dear, what the favor was?”

“Just a
simple
one!” Then she shakes her head. “No, it was a big one, I guess. A project of mine. Something I want to do. Anyway—
c'est la vie!
”

“Can you tell me about it?”

“Not yet, Granny; honest I can't. It's still too much—up in the air. More so today than ever.”

“Leona,” Edith says, “someday I'd like to take you to Magens Bay—to the beach there. I want to see that beach again, suddenly, and besides I want to show it to you. There's something I want to tell you. Would you like to go today, dear? Right now? John could drive us.”

Leona shakes her head again. “Not today, Granny. I have a mission to perform today. Remember?” Leona looks up at at Edith over her shoulder. “Have you forgotten? I've got to see Eddie Winsow and ask him to call off his hounds.”

“Oh, yes,” Edith says. “That's true.” She had, she realizes, completely forgotten. “Well, then, soon. We'll go to Magens Bay soon.”

Leona stands up. “I'd better get dressed.” She starts toward the house.

“Mr. Winslow could wait till tomorrow,” Edith says.

“Better get him quick, Granny, before he buzzes back to New York.”

“Yes,” Edith says. “I suppose—”

Watching Leona as she runs up the steps to the veranda, she calls, “Will you be having dinner with me tonight, dear?”

“Sure,” Leona says. “At least I think so.”

“Good,” Edith says thoughtfully, standing alone in the garden.

Running up the stairs to her room, Leona glances at her watch. It is nearly noon. She has no clear idea where to look for Eddie. He will certainly be out of his hotel now. Perhaps one of the beaches would be a good place to start. Yes, he is probably at the beach now, having lunch. She slips off her coolie robe, thinking, yes, I'm a girl who, given a job to do, does it; it's one of the things you taught me, Granny. She will look for him first at Morningstar. And this Magens Bay that Granny was talking about, she wonders—where is that?

Seven

They had met often again at Magens Bay that winter of 1907—whenever they could without Edith's mother noticing it. And, one afternoon, Edith remembers finally saying to him, “I want to stay here with you, Andreas.” She had made her mouth form the words she had planned to say, “Stay here—and marry you.”

She had been afraid he would laugh at her for saying it, but he hadn't laughed. He looked at her for a moment, and then looked away.

“I want to marry you,” she repeated.

“Edie—”

“Then will you?” Suddenly she knew she didn't want to hear his answer at all.

“You're leaving for Paris in five weeks.”

“I don't want to go to Paris. I want to stay here, with you.”

His voice was thoughtful. “But you're going to Paris, on the fifteenth of May. Then, from there, you'll go back to your place in New Jersey for two months, the way you always do. And then you'll come back here in the fall, and I'll be here.”

“Please don't joke about it, Andreas. I don't have to do all those things, do I?”

“Have you asked anyone about this?”

“No.”

“Because you're afraid to ask, aren't you? What are you afraid of?”

“No one,” she insisted, “but—”

“It's your father, isn't it?”

“Yes,” she admitted.

He said nothing.

“But I will! I'll ask him. I won't even ask him. I'll tell him—simply tell him that I'm going to marry you.”

“Will you really do that?”

“Andreas—do you think he'd ever let me?”

“You see,” he said, scowling darkly at the horizon, “you know he wouldn't. You're as free now as you'll ever be, which isn't free at all.”

“Still, I'll do it—if you want me to.”

He was silent for a while. “I can't tell you that I
want
you to do it,” he said finally. “Because you've got good reasons to be afraid of asking him. If you do it, it will be up to you.”

“Then I'll do it—as soon as he comes home. Meanwhile, I'll tell my mother.”

He had smiled at her then, holding her fingers in his hand, separating and lifting them one by one.

“Do you love me, Andreas?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

Talking to her mother was harder, that winter, than it had ever been before. Even awake she seemed asleep now. More and more of their card games were played in an endless quiet and, when Edith spoke to her, her mother would either change the subject, or interrupt, or appear not to have heard her at all.

“It's your trick, Mama,” Edith would say.

“Oh … is it?” The cards would flutter and spill from her hand.

She even seemed to have lost interest in talking about the servants and whether they stole or not, which had always been a favorite topic. Finding her perfume gone the day after Edith had inundated herself with it, Dolly Harper had merely muttered, “It's gone … they've taken it.” She never seemed to notice now who waited on her. There was one girl, Alicia, who brought Edith's mother flowers from the garden every day—a beautiful, mahogany-skinned girl with opal eyes who came with armloads of roses and lilies and bougainvillea. Her mother never asked Alicia to bring her flowers, and Edith doesn't remember her ever thanking the girl for them. But she does know that her mother noticed the flowers because of a thing that happened.

They had been playing cards one evening, after dinner, and her mother got her headache and said that she was ready to go upstairs. She got up and crossed the room to put the cards in the drawer of the lowboy where they were kept and, as she tugged at the drawer, a lamp on the lowboy fell over and crashed to the floor. It was a kerosene lamp (there was no electricity in St. Thomas in those days) and was unlighted, but Edith ran quickly to pick it up before oil spilled on the rug. The cut-glass globe was broken and lay in pieces on the floor, and Edith picked up the bits of glass and put them in a wastebasket. Then she went upstairs with her mother.

Late the next morning they were seated again at the card table, and her mother said suddenly, “That girl … that flower girl.”

“Alicia?”

“Yes.”

“What about her, Mama?”

“She broke a beautiful crystal lamp when she was dusting. It was a treasure of a lamp, it came from Paris. And she had the nerve to stand in front of me and deny it! Oh, they're impossible, these niggers. And I had all the evidence too—right in the wastebasket where she'd thrown the pieces.”

“But Mama,” Edith said, astonished, “don't you remember? You broke that lamp yourself last night when you were putting the cards away.”

“I did not!”

“But Mama—you
did.
”

She blinked, and her face reddened. “Oh,” she said.

“Go tell Alicia you're sorry—hurry.”

“I'm afraid it's too late,” she said slowly. “I dismissed her.”

“How could you do a thing like that, Mama? Even if she
had
done it, it would have been just an accident. And it was only a lamp!”

“Well,” she said even more slowly. “I'm afraid there is nothing to be done about it now. She has gone.” She sat there with her cards gripped in her hands, fanning them out, then pressing them together again. Her knuckles were white and her mouth was askew. Two tears squeezed out of her eyes and ran down her cheeks. Suddenly she jumped up. “I'm going to find her!” she said, and she ran through the room and out into the hall, pulled open the front door and ran down the steps into the drive. Edith called after her; one of the other girls could find her, she said. But she wouldn't stop. She ran down the drive and into the road.

Edith waited. Her mother was gone for hours, it began to grow dark, and she knew that she would have to send someone out to look for her or else go out herself. Then there were sounds outside the house, and Edith went to the door. Dolly Bruce Harper was coming up the steps and Andreas was supporting her. She leaned on him heavily, and her silk dress was covered with dust and torn at the hems, her hair was unpinned, and her face was dirty and streaked with tears. Andreas said, “I found her like this—running through the streets.”

Her head lay against Andreas' shoulder and she moaned, “I can't … can't find her. I've looked everywhere, but nobody knows her. What's her name? I can't remember her name!”

Edith put her arms around her mother and, together, she and Andreas helped her into the house and up the stairs.

In the middle of the stairs, Dolly Harper shrieked, “She used to bring me flowers! She was my flower girl! Beautiful flowers!”

They went on to her room, and Andreas lifted her up onto the bed.

“Who is this young man?” she asked in a dreamy voice.

“This is Andreas Larsen, Mama.”

“Pink roses. And lilies—”

“I'll get you a glass of wine, Mama.” She went to the carafe on the dresser.

Andreas was bending over Dolly Harper's face, and suddenly he straightened up. “Is that what you give her?” he asked sharply. “Wine?”

“It helps her sleep,” Edith said, filling a glass.

He turned quickly, with a sad look on his face, and walked toward the door. “I'll wait for you outside,” he said.

When she met him, a few minutes later, in the shadows outside the gate, she said, “I told Mama about us!”

He held her shoulders. “What did she say?”

She laughed a little wildly. “Why, she didn't even seem to
care!
She just smiled and nodded. Isn't that wonderful?”

His face was hidden from her in the shadows, and she couldn't see his eyes. “Come on,” he said. “Let's walk a little.”

“Aren't you happy, Andreas? Isn't this a good sign?”

“I think it means—absolutely nothing,” he said.

He was right, she knew. They walked in silence for a little way.

“You have a sunburn, Edith,” her father said. He had arrived home unannounced, late that afternoon. “It is not becoming.” He tweaked her nose playfully. “I don't want a red-nosed little princess.”

“Papa—” she began.

“If you arrive in Europe looking like a lobster you'll be laughed out of every drawing room in Paris. There is also such a thing as sun poisoning.”

“Yes, Papa.”

“If you have occasion to leave the house, you should wear a hat or carry a parasol.” He continued to hold the tip of her nose pinched between his fingers. “It's hardly ladylike to be sunburned.”

“Yes, Papa.”

“Yes-Papa-yes-Papa-yes-Papa,” he mimicked. “I have a dutiful little princess, anyway. Now tell me how you got this lobster face.”

“I've been out walking, Papa.”

“Walking with your mother?”

“When she's resting or not feeling well I sometimes walk—”

“You mean you walk
alone?
You leave her alone?”

“Sometimes she doesn't seem to want me with her, Papa.”

He pushed her face aside with his hand, and all at once his voice was harsh. “Whether she wants you with her or not, whether she is well or unwell, you are to keep your mother company. Where is she now?”

“In her room, Papa,” Edith said.

“He's home tonight,” she whispered to Andreas when she met him. “But he was cross with me. It's useless to ask him anything when he's in a mood like that.”

He stood very silently in the moonless night, a tall shape. “Edie,” he said at last, “when are you going to believe me? It's going to be useless to ask him at
any
time.”

“Couldn't I just try?” she begged him. “Then, if he said no—”

“Asking isn't going to get you anywhere, you know that. No, there's only one way to do it.”

“Without asking,” she said.

In the darkness, he nodded.

“But he might say yes!”

He shook his head. “No,” he said. “Edie—there are so many reasons why I will not be—acceptable to him.”

“Why won't you be?”

He shrugged. “For one thing, my family. Not good enough for Harpers.”

“But your father is one of the most important men in St. Thomas!”

“It isn't a question of importance,” he said. “It's something else. I have the tarbrush.”

She had never heard the expression before. “What do you mean, Andreas?”

“I have black blood. On my mother's side. She is half black.”

“Oh!” For a moment her head reeled and she stepped away from him. “That's not true!” she cried. “It's a lie! You just mean you don't want to marry me!”

“Of course it's true.”

“True! How could it be? If it's true, why didn't you tell me?”

He turned his back to her. “Why should I have told you?” he shouted angrily. “Why should I have to apologize to
you
that I am a quarter Saint Thomian? Why should I have to apologize to
anyone
—much less you, a
Harper!
I'm proud of it! I have island blood, and I'm proud. I will not get down on my knees to
you
and apologize for anything!”