All for a Sister (40 page)

Celeste’s face burned with betrayal. “It sounds to me like he
did
have another life.”

Graciela didn’t look up. “It almost killed me when he left. I knew all along that he had a wife and children. I promised not to write to him, never wanting to bring him any shame. But when he wrote to me that he was coming back . . .” Words disappeared as her face turned into a mask of rapturous joy that lasted long enough for her to say, “I was so happy . . .” before collapsing in fresh grief.

A long-buried memory surfaced. “Papa said you came with the house.”

Graciela wore her shame like a mantle. “
Éramos tontos.
Fools, both of us, but he’d convinced me that he did not love his wife. And that if we remained close to each other, someday . . .”

“Someday what?” Celeste thought about her poor mother, surely aware of the treasonous attraction. In the darkest recesses of her mind, Celeste had known too, though she’d been too young and naive to give it words or form. And Calvin, too, surely. Graciela had been just one more competitor for his father’s attention, and Celeste knew she didn’t speak precisely for him when she said, “We loved you.”

“Lo sé.”

“We trusted you.”

“I know, Celi
mía
. And believe me, it is because of you, and your brother, that I—” She buried her face in her hands for a moment and emerged ashen. “I prayed to God for forgiveness.
Padre, perdóname.
I thought I could go through with this, this—
farsa
—I don’t know the word.”

“Charade?”

“
Sí.
But when I saw you, my Celita, I saw the children I could never have, and I knew I could stay longer,
para siempre
, forever, as long as your father and I, we didn’t—”

Whatever resentment had spurred this conversation began to melt, but Celeste did not move, standing resolute as the woman who had been more than a second mother to her sobbed in a fresh expression of the grief she’d been forced to suppress all those years ago.

“Tu mamá,”
she said, her eyes red with tears, “before she died. She told me she had it in her heart to forgive one person. Only one, and that person was me. I was writing her papers, and I started to write that sentence, but she stopped my hand. She said, no. She said, ‘I will allow you to confess your own sin.’”

A new wave of tears washed over her, doubling her in grief and shame, and this time brought Celeste in with its tide.

And so, there remained just one more question, and the
reappearance of Dana and Werner gave her the courage to ask it. After all, if she didn’t, they surely would. Only she could ask Graciela, because she was the only one who loved her.

“Mamá,”
she whispered into her coconut-scented hair, “
dónde están esas páginas?
The missing ones, that tell about my mother.”

“
Por favor!
I loved your papa, but I came to love all of you—your mother, too.” She looked past Celeste to the others. “Can you not be satisfied with what you know already?”

Dana stepped forward. “The last time I saw my mother was when I was twelve years old. Locked away in a jail cell. She came to visit me, and we had dinner together. Roast beef and potatoes. She kissed me and said she would make everything all right. That it would take time, and I had to be patient, but in a few months, we would be back together. And I never saw her again. So, no. I’m sorry. I cannot be satisfied.”

As she spoke, Werner stepped closer, finally resting his hand on her shoulder, and she seemed to grow stronger with every word. So, too, did Celeste stay connected to Graciela.

“We need to know,
Mamá
. This isn’t your burden to bear.”

That seemed to break her resolve. After all, they’d both seen the tragic effects of a life dedicated to keeping secrets.

“Go back outside,” she said. “I’ll bring them to you.”

Like children, faces downcast with shuffling steps, they obeyed. The fire had burned down, and Werner tossed in a few thick sticks of wood, and the crackle and scent of cedar drew them in. Celeste picked up her coffee, not quite cool, and took a sip, looking out over the yard.

“I think I want to get rid of the playhouse,” she mused aloud. Then, remembering, “Is that all right with you, Dana?”

Dana looked both surprised and slightly amused to be consulted. “I suppose. Why?”

“To put in a swimming pool. Let’s redo the whole house, in fact. Top to bottom. Fresh start.”

“Whatever you like. It’s your house.”

“It’s yours, too.”

It was nothing more than small talk. An idle distraction from what awaited, and then Graciela arrived, holding a bundle of papers folded and tied with a pink ribbon. With a long match, she lit the torches along the patio, bathing them in a soft light, but enough to see the words.

“God have mercy,” she said as Werner took them from her. She pulled up a chair and sat, taking Celeste’s hand. And together, they stared into the flames.

THE WRITTEN CONFESSION OF MARGUERITE DUFRANE, PAGES 59–66

I STUFFED MYSELF
with food while sending hundreds of dollars to those starving in China, and I knew immediately my prayers had been answered when your father came home one day and said he’d been invited to be a guest lecturer at Stanford University. He made it immediately clear that I was not to go along. It was a limited budget; he’d be sharing a house with several other engineers, all of them bachelors for the term.

I asked him how long he thought he’d be gone. Two weeks? Three?

“Twelve,” he said.

Three months. He wouldn’t be here for the birth of the baby.

When I said as much out loud, he looked—how can I describe it? Relieved? Resigned? If nothing else, there was the inescapable feeling that we both were keeping the same secret. Telling the same lie, and we would for the rest of our lives together. In some ways, my darling, though we both loved you dearly, you were what grew between us. The light of his life, and the light of mine, but our lights never touched each other again.

He asked, “Will you be all right without me?”

What if I’d said no? If I’d been the wife I’d been before, needful
and clinging? A bride willing to sacrifice whatever necessary to keep our lives together? I could go with him, share his bed as he shared the house, insisting that he not resume a bachelor’s life for three months. Or fall at his feet and beg him not to leave me here in such a vulnerable state.

But I did neither. Instead, I masked my heaving relief as an unfounded fear and forced him to take me in his arms to give me comfort.

I said I supposed I could call him on the telephone when it was time for the baby to come, and he could pace the floors in California and hand out cigars to his fellow housemates. He promised he would do just that.

Three days later he was gone and I felt myself off of the tightrope and safely on the platform. But the solid ground was still miles and miles away.

I began once again to make social calls and receive visitors, and through careful conversation, I learned of a private academy in Lake Forest that allowed students in Calvin’s grade to board. I explained to him that it would be best, as I couldn’t take care of him the way I should while I was waiting for the baby. I’d be weak and tired, and with his father gone, there might not be anybody here to take care of him when I went into the hospital.

He looked terrified, poor boy. He said, “You didn’t go to the hospital when you had Mary.”

I said, that’s because Daddy was here. And he had been, right outside the door, and by my side before she was an hour old. As disinterested as Arthur was in being a husband, he was a wonderful, attentive, and affectionate father.

I packed up my little boy and delivered him to a formal headmaster, who confiscated his toy soldiers and forbade me to visit for at least two weeks.

That left just the two of us, at least in the evenings after Mrs. Gibbons left for the day.

I suppose it will sound irrational to say that I count this as a special time, but I did. I’ve never had many close friends. We resumed our games of gin, and Mrs. Lundgren told me all about her daughter. No doubt trying to convince me of her goodness, and I listened as politely as I could. When I asked her what plans she had for the two of them after the baby was born, she said she hoped to find a position as a domestic. Perhaps a live-in situation, where the girl could work also, and they could save up to find a little place of their own.

I asked if she would tell her about the baby, and she said, “No.”

And that ended the conversation.

Arthur wrote letters regularly, and once, having come across me reading one by the firelight, she asked, casually, if I would share whatever little quip had caused me to smile. For the life of me, I cannot remember what it was. Something about one of his housemates, an irascible old man who regularly derided his own research. But I shared it, and we laughed, and I went back through some of his other letters and read those, too. Even the few sweet lines he meant just for me, or his thoughts about the baby. Once, he sent a photograph of the ocean, and a tiny, delicate pink shell. He said it made him think of our Mary. I read this to Mrs. Lundgren, unable to continue through my tears, and she took it from my hand and read my husband’s words to me.

That’s when I knew. When I heard her voice read his words, everything I’d been afraid to suspect came to light. The two of them, melded together. She and I, too, shared a secret and a lie. But not from each other.

Right in that moment, I asked her if Arthur knew she was carrying his child.

She didn’t flinch, and she appeared untouched by shame when she said, simply, “No.” Then, in the next breath, “Are you going to tell him?”

And I, in the same spirit, gave the same answer. No.

We were, in that moment, simply two mothers, willing to sacrifice bits of ourselves for the sake of our children. Odd as it may seem, I took some comfort in knowing that your father would truly be your father, in every sense. Even more, I admit, it came as a relief to know the source of your paternity wasn’t in any way undesirable.

“Perhaps,” she said, no doubt bolstered by my calm demeanor, “you could send me a picture from time to time?”

I came close to reassuring her, for as much as she could trust my promise.

I knew it would be far too dangerous to allow Mrs. Lundgren to ever go into labor here at the house, as the unpredictability of babies could mean its arrival right as Mrs. Gibbons was in the middle of cleaning the silver or washing up the breakfast dishes.

So when we knew the time was close, I took Mrs. Lundgren to the Mary Thompson Hospital for Women and Children, which my family has supported with charitable contributions since just after the War between the States, when a Union soldier’s widow hemorrhaged to death in the street just in front of our church. I took one of my older satchels from the attic and packed it with a comfortable robe and gown, as well as two dresses I thought might fit well after the baby was born. As a more sentimental gesture, I included a pack of cards, in case she found another woman to play a round with, and in the not-quite dead of night, I called for a taxi to take us straight to the front door.

If I know one thing about the Mary Thompson Hospital, it is that I was hardly the first wealthy woman to arrive with a house servant in tow, and a good number of those would bear children with a strong resemblance to the master. So when I made our introductions, I was met with nary a sideways glance. The prominence of my name at the top of the check assured their discretion, and they were left with the understanding that I, and only I, was to be telephoned when the baby arrived.

I’d arranged for Mrs. Lundgren to have a private room, and believe it or not, we embraced each other before my parting. She actually thanked me for my kindness, and I felt a pang of guilt thinking how cruel her life must have been for her to think me kind and generous in this moment. Still, I reassured her that, once the child was born, and in my home, I would go straightaway to the judge, an old family friend, and I would convince him that my Mary’s death had been an inevitable tragedy. She would have her daughter, and I would have, well, whatever God would desire, though I prayed beyond prayer to be given another little girl. A second chance.