The taxi arrived and I got in quickly. The driver was an older man with curly, gray hair and a round, red face.
"Where to, Miss?" he asked as we moved down the driveway.
I thought a moment.
"Do you know Judge Childs?" I asked.
"Nelson Childs? Sure do. Everyone who's lived here most of his life knows the judge, Miss."
"Good. You know where he lives then?"
"Sure. Post Hill Road, about a mile from here. You can't miss his house. It's one of the biggest on the Cape. Is that where you want me to take you?" he asked.
I hesitated.
"Yes," I said firmly. "That's where I want to go."
"Then we'll pull up anchor and set sail," he said and turned left instead of right, which was the way back home.
The jovial taxi driver was full of questions, but if he had hoped to make a meal of my answers, he was going to starve. I answered everything with a yes or a no or a maybe. When it came to being
closed- mouthed, I had many models to learn from in this New England community.
Post Hill Road was a paved street that turned for a quarter of a mile or so up a rise and then toward the beach. There were only two other homes on the street, both small Cape Cod houses. But the judge's home was a true New England mansion, even more impressive than Grandma Olivia and Grandpa Samuel's home.
"You know this is a historical house, don't you?" the taxi driver asked.
"No."
"The judge bought it for a song and then he and his wife restored it. It's even been featured in a few magazines. My wife knows all about that stuff," he added. "It's a three-story colonial," he said as we drew closer. The house had been restored in a weathered grey cladding and had a semicircular entry porch. What made it even more unusual was its large octagonal cupola.
The driveway was circular. Like Grandma Olivia and Grandpa Samuel's grounds, the lawn was pampered and designed with fountains, walkways, and small rock gardens, but there was almost twice as much acreage here. When we entered the circular drive, I looked off to the right and saw the dock, the moored sailboat and motor boat, and some small dinghies. Just behind the house was a large gazebo and another area for flowers, where I saw a swing seat under a large maple tree.
The judge's car was in front of the garage so I felt confident he was home.
"How much would it cost to have you wait for me?" I asked the taxi driver.
"How long?"
"About twenty minutes," I said. He shrugged.
"I have to charge you another fifteen dollars for half hour or part of," he replied.
"That's fine," I said and got out. I think he would have waited for nothing just to satisfy his curiosity. He didn't take his eyes off me as I stepped up to the front door and rang the bell. I heard a deep ding-dong sound on the inside and waited. Moments later, a short, balding man who looked to be in his early sixties opened the door. He wasn't dressed like a butler or a servant. He wore a white shirt opened at the collar and a pair of dark slacks. The small ridges of gray hair resembled steel wool over the sides of his head and down the back where it was a great deal thicker. He had a caramel complexion with dark brown eyes and his nose was thick at the bridge and his lower lip was fuller than his upper.
He took a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from his top pocket and placed them slowly over his eyes to gaze out at me. They magnified his eyes and made them look even rounder. Without speaking, he looked over at the taxicab and then he turned back to me.
"Didn't hear you drive up," he said. "How can I help you?"
"My name is Melody Logan. I'd like to see Judge Childs," I said.
"Judge expecting you?" he asked. He seemed astounded by my visit. Didn't the judge ever have people calling on him?
"No, but he asked me to drop by when I had an opportunity," I replied.
"That so?" he said and stood there chewing on the idea for a moment. Then he shook his head. "He don't usually see people unless they have an appointment with him," he added.
"Can you please tell him I'm here?" I asked, not hiding my impatience.
He didn't move.
"He might be nappin' in the den. That's where he usually is if he don't go someplace on Sunday. He falls asleep after he reads the papers."
"I have a taxicab waiting for me," I pointed out so he would appreciate the time he was wasting. He nodded.
"Yeah. Okay. I'll go check." He started to close the door on me. suppose you could wait inside," he decided and stepped back to let me enter. He closed the door. "Be right back," he promised and started down the short corridor.
The only illumination in the entry way and the living room on my right came from the sunlight that penetrated the windows with their curtains drawn back, but I could see some decorative wood ornaments applied to the walls in the corridor. There were paintings on these walls as well, but I didn't think any of them were Kenneth's. They weren't his style. They were original oils depicting colonial scenes, realistic with subdued colors, all set in thick, ornate frames.
All the furniture I saw looked antique. It was as if it had come with the house and it, too, had been restored. I felt as if I had stepped into a museum or one of those" reconstructed homes open to tours. It didn't feel lived in, warm. Yet from somewhere deep in the house came music I recognized. I listened hard until I recalled it from music class. It was Debussy's La Mer.
Moments later, the balding man appeared, followed by Judge Childs dressed in a maroon satin robe with matching slippers. His hair was a little disheveled, and as he drew closer, I saw he hadn't shaved. His eyes were somewhat bloodshot and he looked flushed, as if he had been jolted out of a deep sleep.
"Melody, my dear. What a wonderful surprise," he said, holding out his hands. "When Morton told me I had a beautiful young lady visiting, I thought he was joking. You did right to wake me, Morton," the judge told his butler.
"I didn't mean to disturb you," I said.
"Oh nonsense. Old men like myself need to be disturbed. Otherwise, they would just waste away musing about their glorious lost youth. How about something to drink? A lemonade perhaps?"
"That would be fine," I said.
"Morton, we'll be in the sitting room," the judge said. "Two lemonades if you please."
"Very good, Judge."
"My maid, Toby, is off today," he explained. "This way, my dear," he said, moving toward the room to our right. When we entered, he rushed over to turn on the lamps. "Please have a seat," he said, indicating the strange looking bench to his right. I hesitated. "Oh, you can sit on it," he said with a smile. "It's actually comfortable."
"I've never seen anything like it," I said.
"Neither had I until my wife bought it at an auction in Boston. It's called an empire hall bench and it was made around 1810. Most everything in this house is an antique of one sort or another. Our furnishings are quite eclectic, as is the artwork. My wife made the house her life. She would rush off for hours, go miles and miles if she heard there was an auction or a sale of antiques, and New England has an antique shop or an auction every ten feet," the judge remarked. "I swear--"
He sat in a high-backed, ornate gold chair with a red cushion backing and red seat. He looked uncomfortable because the chair was small, but he didn't complain.
"But I'll say this for her, she never bought something and didn't put it to use. No showcase furnishing for her. We had to use it all. Wait until I show you the dining room. The table is from the early eighteenth century, Baroque style, I think. I can't remember it all. Anyway," he rattled on, "you can see where Kenneth got his first education in art, architecture, and the like. I blamed his mother for that," he said.
"He's a wonderful artist though, isn't he?"
"Yes, I guess he is. People do pay large sums of money for his work. Ah, here's our lemonade," he said as Morton returned with two tumblers on a silver tray. "The glasses are contemporary, but that tray-- what about that tray, Morton?"
"French, 1857," Morton recited.
"There, you see. Morton knows it all. He drove my wife everywhere in those days, didn't you, Morton?"
"Yes sir."
"Morton's been with me, what, forty years now, Morton?"
"Forty-two years and four months, Judge." Judge Childs laughed.
"What a memory. I depend on Morton for all my dates and responsibilities now, don't I, Morton?"
"I do my best, Judge."
"That he does, that he does. Well, drink up. Thank you, Morton."
"Yes sir," Morton said and left.
"Don't know where I'd be without him. When I lost my wife, I was lost myself. I didn't know where my own medicine was kept. So," he said, his eyes shifting to me, "you came to visit, did you? How did you get here, by the way?"
"Taxicab," I said. "I have him waiting."
"Oh, that's terrible. Unheard of. Let me take care of that," he said. He started to get up.
"It's all right, Judge Childs."
"No, no. Morton will drive you home. I don't want any taxicab driver hanging about. It will only be a moment," he insisted and left. I heard him whispering to Morton in the hallway and then I heard Morton go out.
"I have to pay him," I said as soon as the judge appeared again.
"That's taken care of, my dear. I'm honored you've come to visit. The least I can do is take care of the cab driver. Now then--oh, how's Jacob? I should have asked you that first thing," he said returning to his seat.
"He's doing well and might come home very soon. Maybe even tomorrow."
"That's wonderful." He sipped his lemonade. "Yes, I have antiques that would make a museum curator's mouth water," he continued. He seemed driven to talk, nervous. It suddenly occurred to me that Grandma Olivia might have called him and told him the gist of my conversation with her.
"You know I've been visiting my grandmother Belinda," I began.
"Oh?" He said, nodding. "I do think Olivia mentioned that. Yes. How is Belinda doing?"
"Haven't you visited her yourself, Judge Childs?" I asked.
"Me? Oh, not for some time," he said. "Why, did she say I was there?"
"Yes."
He laughed.
"Poor Belinda. Even before she was, well, disturbed, she had a problem with reality," he said. It sounded like a line he and Grandma Olivia had rehearsed.
"But you have visited her?"
"Oh sure. You see that painting there," he said nodding to a large portrait on the wall behind me. "My wife found that in a sale just outside of Hyannis Port. Bought it for two hundred and fifty dollars. Turns out it's an original and probably worth ten thousand if it's worth a penny. She was good at making finds like that.
"So," he said without taking a breath, "how's your fiddle playing?"
I put the lemonade down slowly on the small marble table beside me. Morton had left a wooden coaster that looked as if it, too, was some sort of antique. Then I turned to the judge. My silence made him swallow hard. He stared a moment and then he nodded softly.
"This isn't just a casual visit, is it? You came here to ask me something specific, didn't you?"
"Yes sir," I said. "I think you know what it is, too," I said. He nodded again, put his own glass down, and took a deep breath, closing his eyes and then opening them.
"You sure you want to ask me these questions?" he said.
"Yes. I know everyone tells me there's no point in stirring up the past, that it just brings a lot of pain to a lot of people. But I grew up believing I was one person and then I found out, in a hard and shocking way, that I was someone else, that the people I had loved and trusted all my life were lying to me, about the most basic thing of all, me, my identity," I said.
The judge nodded.
"When you get to be as old as I am, you look back on your life and it seems as if you've led at least two different lives:
-
I wasn't a wild young man. I never did much that would make my parents ashamed, and I did do a lot that made them proud. Funny thing is, if you've had good parents and you've loved them and known they loved you, even after they're dead, you worry about doing things that would make them ashamed. I guess that's what people mean when they say you can live on in your children."
"I don't know both my parents," I said. "I may never know who my real father is, but I know my mother and now I know my grandmother. Are you my grandfather?" I asked bluntly. He stared at me. "Grandma Olivia doesn't want me to know the truth, but I think she has her own private reasons for that."
He smiled.
"You're a bright young woman. Any man would be proud to call you his granddaughter."
"Are you that man?" I pursued.
He brought his head back and gazed up at the ceiling. When he lowered his head, his eyes were glassy with tears. I held my breath.
"My Louise knew, but she was too much the lady to ever bring it up," he said. "And you should have seen her around Haille. She never made that girl feel unwanted. Hers was a heart so full of charity and love, it could forgive Judas.
"Oh, I could say I drank too much in those days. I could blame it on bourbon, or I could say Belinda was beautiful and enticing, which she was, but in the end, I have to bear the burden of my own sins."
"Then you are my mother's father and, therefore, my grandfather?"
"Yes," he said. He shook his head and smiled. "Look how simple it is to say it now. Maybe because I'm looking at you and I see the pain. I can't lie in the face of that. At least, I can't now," he said. "I never had to lie to Louise. She never came right out and asked me," he said. "Isn't that wonderful? I didn't deserve her."
"Did my mother ever know?"
"Yes, but not until she was much older. Actually, not long before she got herself into trouble and she and Chester left Provincetown."
"You mean pregnant with me?"
He nodded.
"I think I suddenly need something stronger than this," he said, holding up the lemonade. "If you'll excuse me a moment.' He rose and went to a cabinet to take out a bottle of Tennessee whiskey. He poured himself a half a glass and drank most of it in a gulp. "Fortifies the courage," he explained, poured himself another, and stood by the window.
"How did she find out?" I asked.
"I had to tell her eventually. When I discovered she and Kenneth were getting too serious about each other. It broke my heart to do it, but under the circumstances, I had no choice." He turned, looking as if he had aged years in minutes. "They both resented me for it."
"Especially Kenneth?"
"Yes," he said, bowing his head in sorrow. "It's terrible enough when a son learns his father was unfaithful to his mother, but when that infidelity steals away the woman he loves, the pain is far more and the chasm it creates between father and son . . . well, it would be easier to step across the Grand Canyon than bridge the gap that's grown between my son and me. I'm afraid, I'll take that to my grave."