My Notorious Life (51 page)

—She can’t hardly read. Anyways, she’s got secrets of her own she doesn’t want spilled.

—What secrets?

—I’ll never tell, I said. —But if her father ever finds her he is liable to scatter her brains around the scullery.

My sister sat clutching her cup, her eyes locked on the far distance. I felt sure she would now tell me her husband had discovered her affair with Mr. Pickering.

—What is it, dear Lily? I said. —What’s wrong?

She shook her head in small rapid shakes.

—Are you hurt? I cried. —Has he thrown you out? Taken up with someone else? Is your foster mother Mrs. Ambrose angry? Has she discovered you know her secrets?

—No.

—What then?

The white of her throat pulsed as she swallowed. —I’m . . . Her gaze dropped to her lap and back again. Her meaning was plain.

—Oh Dutch! I cried. —Was it the tablets I sent?

—I did not take those tablets. My husband has been away on the Continent since the New Year.

—Perhaps when he hears the news he will come rushing back.

—You don’t understand, she said, stricken.

And then I did understand.

—I have not seen Eliot, she said, white as powder, —in a year.

She stared out the window at the gray garden outside. The branches of the magnolia tree were dark claws against the white sky. Old snow dusted black with coal ash covered the grounds. She would not look at me. I came behind her chair and put my arms around her shoulders with my cheek resting on her hair, but she shrank into herself, her head down, the heels of her hands pressed to her eyes.

—I am lost, she said. —Utterly.

—No, you are found. I found you. We found each other.

—Mother thinks I am in Berlin with Eliot.

—And Eliot?

—He thinks I am here consulting Dr. Bedford for treatments of my malady.

—When does Eliot return?

—In April. April twenty first.

It was seven weeks away. —How many months gone?

—He left at New Year’s I told you.

—I did not mean Eliot. I meant you.

She looked at me, blinking her scared eyes, and I asked her again about her turns. —When did you last . . . ?

—I don’t know, she cried. —Three or four weeks?

—You are sure that Eliot is not—

—It’s impossible, she said, and shuddered.

—You can tell me or not. His name don’t matter.

She shook her head and wouldn’t say.

—What do you want to do? Do you want to stay here? You can stay.

—I couldn’t. She covered her mouth. —Not here. My mother—

—She’s not your mother.

—For shame I can’t stay here, she cried.

—I will take the child and raise it. Whatever you want. I will—

—No! I could never. Never. She shuddered.

—Then what? Is the father married?

In her silence I saw the answer was yes.

—I’m trapped, Dutch said. —I never thought . . . the doctors told me I was barren . . . that I’d never . . .

—You don’t have to go through with it. I can help you.

—Shh. She put her fingers in her ears. —Don’t speak of that. It’s the murder of innocents.

—Phh. It isn’t quite. But if you think so, why did you come here?

—You’re my sister. I have no one else.

At last she lay her head on my shoulder and wept, and I felt so strangely happy. I was her sister, she said. She chose me. She was here.

*  *  *

I’d have given her anything, all of what I had. Ropes of pearls. A gala. A trip to Rome. For now I gave her the blue room. The drapes and bedspread in blue brocade satin, the bedstead in gold and ebony. She went under the covers scarcely to emerge for days. Tea cakes and bromides and possets would not comfort her. She was bereft and so alone. I coaxed the story out of her as I did with all of them, about how Mr. Pickering would have nothing to do with her now. That gold-bearded unicorn she pined for, who called himself a gentleman, had gone back to his wife in Newport and left
my sister screwed to her predicament. Her husband Eliot was due to return from Berlin on April 21st—just six weeks now—and what would he discover when he arrived? His wife
enceinte
. Dutchie could not think past the twenty first of April. According to her she had no choice but to be soon showing and thus discovered and renounced and disgraced &c., no longer welcome as a VanDerWeil or an Ambrose.

So then what was she?

A Muldoon. Her only choices was with me. I had every possibility she needed. The medicine, or the operation, which could allow her to return to her old life, if she wanted it. Or, if she chose not to relieve herself of her obstruction, I had money, which would allow her to forsake her old life and start all over again, with or without a child. Whatever road she picked, she could stay here in the blue room with the carved medallions of bluebirds on the ceilings and the great windows looking out over Fifth Avenue, where the parade of carriages was a gorgeous circus, and the wide bluestone sidewalks were full of replacement husbands in tall hats.

—You could have yourself a new Mister in no time at all, I said. —Stay here and all society will know you as Lillian Reardon or Dutch Muldoon, or whatever other name you choose, new in town from Boston, and who will know the difference?

My sister shuddered in her misery and did not so much as glance at the bottle of Madame DeBeausacq’s Lunar Pills for Female Complaint left by her bedside.

—If you are going to take them, I said, —please don’t wait much longer. At a certain point it becomes too late. It will be the worse for you—

She put her fingers in her ears. She would not let me examine her. She would not tell me how far gone she was. Seven weeks, was my guess.

—You do not have long to make up your mind, I said. —Or rather, if you wait your mind will be made up for you.

—It’s wrong. I do not wish to talk of it.

—Ignoring it? I have seen many who tried that method. It doesn’t work.

She flung her arm across her eyes.

—Tell me about your Mister Pickering, said I, soft to her.

—Gerald. He owns ships. He imports goods. What does it matter?

—Did you love him?

Tears welled and leaked from her eyes. —He said . . . She paused to collect
herself. —He said . . . I was the flower of the ages. He said I was like a dream. It was a dream, Ann, it was . . . you’ve no idea.

The dream she told me started not in a fairy bower but in the vertical railway at the Marble House Hotel. The dandy Gerald Pickering smiled at her quite boldly in that lift, my sister reported. When it stopped and the doors opened, he invited her to dinner.

—We went, Dutch said. —If only we hadn’t.

As my sister told her story, her eyes were veined with red and her hair streamed black and wild around her shoulders. She was so white and delicate and sad. The terrible thing about Mr. Pickering was that he made her laugh. He paid attention. He listened to her prattle and told her such marvelous tales of adventure. He had seen the wild savages of the Congo and the snake charmers of Delhi, he had dined with the Ottoman dervishes and suffered through malaria and tempests and desert wastelands.

—He is the most remarkable storyteller, said my dupe of a sister.

—Always a dangerous trait in a man.

—No! Don’t scoff at me. He was pressed into marriage by his family. As I was. He doesn’t love his wife, any more than I love Eliot, or ever did. It was Mother’s idea from the beginning, that I should marry Eliot.

—And Mr. Pickering? Whose idea was he?

—Mine! My sister blushed fiercely and stammered, —My own! I am not ashamed. Gerald said—he said he’d never known a lady as knowledgeable as I, and that it was so startling to him to hear such informed questions coming from . . .

—From?

—From such a pretty mouth. Dutch turned her face away, her shoulders shaking with misery.

—There now,
macushla,
I whispered to my Dutchie, so soft. —I can help you. You are not dependent on him or Mr. VanDerWeil, or the Ambroses neither. There’s plenty of money here to answer your every need. Whatever you want is yours.

—Money can’t buy what I want.

Listening to my sister as she cried, I was filled with a melancholy so dark it was like a blindness. I had found Dutch, but she was a stranger. When I sang to her, humming the old songs, she barely cracked a smile at all at all.

*  *  *

One morning, after she had been under my roof more than a week, she got up and went out in her heavy veils and arrived back before dark in a cab-for-hire, with her trunks and suitcases. She had been to her hotel, she said, where she had also retrieved her mail and posted letters on hotel stationery—one to her false mother Mrs. Ambrose, and the other to her husband Eliot, telling them she was indisposed, in treatment for her feminine ailment. She was weak, she told them, and doctors had advised her not to send or receive mail. Then she had checked out. They would be frantic, she said, but it was only for a few weeks, while she cleared her head. It seemed she was moving in with us. Was she? I did not dare ask for fear it would scare her away. I fed her rosewater and honey cakes and did not annoy her with questions. Little by little, hope like a weevil bored down in my heart and allowed me to think at long last that my dream of reunion lacked only our brother Joe to be real.

*  *  *

When Charlie was introduced to my sister he bowed low before her. —Dutch Muldoon! he said, and she flinched at the name.

—Lily, please. Mrs. Lillian Reardon, she said. —But you do look familiar, Mr. Jones. Have I made your acquaintance before? Perhaps in Boston? Chicago? Paris?

—Psst, it’s me, he whispered, and winked. —Charlie off the orphan train. I remember when you were nothing but a squibben of a girl on your sister’s hip. Do you recall when I showed you the cows outside the train window?

She blushed and shook her head, no, she did not remember any cows.

—It was me who taught you to moo! Charlie was a terrible tease.

—I can assure you, sir, Dutch said, —I never mooed.

—You did! I told her. —Charlie and some of the boys made a pet out of you.

—A pet? she said, with the back of her hand to her head. —Please. I am in no condition—

—Poor sister, I said, and shooed Charlie off to the stables.

That evening, when we had said good night to Dutch, he said, —Your sister is high and mighty, isn’t she?

—She’s miserable. And deserted by all her useless people.

—So, you’ll just help her out and no one will be the wiser.

—She won’t do it. She says it’s wrong. Mrs. Ambrose has told her Madame DeBeausacq is an evil sorceress. Dutch said, “No matter how much I love you, Ann, as my sister, I could never bring myself to consent to such wickedness, and I pray you will come to your senses and cease your practices.”

—So, you’ll either bring her around or you won’t.

—I told her I’d raise the child myself.

—Did you? he said, with keen interest. His eyes were lit with the idea of it.

—It won’t never happen. No child of hers would be allowed to grow up here.

—Pffft, he said. —She puts on airs. Has her snout in the air. We’ll bring her around, won’t we?

*  *  *

Charlie was the only one who knew Dutch was my sister. Every one else in the household thought she was Mrs. Lillian Reardon, my patient, an acquaintance from my school days. Greta was suspicious to be sure. She told Rebecca she thought Dutch was some royalty, maybe a countess, because she got special treatment, poached eggs and finger sandwiches, served by myself on a tray with a greenhouse rose in a cutglass vase.

After another week of coddling, my sister cheered up nicely, riding out in the carriage with me, or sitting in a chair by the window where she wrote for hours in her diary. But the bottle of Madame DeBeausacq’s lunar tablets on her side table had not been moved.

—If another week goes by, I told her, —and you do not swallow these, your decision is good as made for you.

—Don’t remind me.

—Please Lily. Trust me. I’m professional in these matters.

She put her head under the pillow but when I tickled her in the ribs she removed it and laughed at me. —Oh Ann. Remember how we used to tickle our Joe?

I did remember. —Maybe we’ll tickle him again some day.

—He’s a
man
. Can you imagine?

We lay spooned together on the bed and imagined it. We loosed our hair and played with it, putting it up then putting it down. I took a piece of it under my nose for a mustache and she did the same while we examined ourselves in the mirror as men, laughing and mugging. She admired my figure and said, —Oh Ann you did turn into a fine good-looking lady!

—Not like you. With your eyes.

—No, no. Yours are . . . wise. They are Mam’s eyes. Whereas mine—

—Never mind, never mind, hush, Dutchie. Oh I liked my sister so. She was an old familiar shoe to me, and while we passed the hours and shared our tea and traded stories, hope got up on its little new legs and began to toddle around in me, yes it did.

*  *  *

Annabelle approached my sister after school, without a clue that the beautiful pale-skinned lady before her was her own aunt. —Nice to meet you Mrs. Reardon.

—Please call me Lily, said Dutch.

—Lily was my best playmate when I was a girl your age, I told Annabelle.

—What did you play at with my Mama? asked Annabelle, and admired the bracelet of gold filigree on Dutch’s wrist.

—We played at pitching pennies, Dutch said, and smiled.

—Only we used pebbles, I said, —since we didn’t have no pennies.

—Axie, do you remember? Dutch asked.

—Why do you call my mother Axie? Annabelle asked.

—When we was your age, I said, —I was called Axie.

—And I was called Dutch. Immediately my sister looked sorry she had said it. —It was only a nickname.

—My mother had a sister called Dutch, said Annabelle, —that she cries over sometimes. She wishes she could find her, but Dutch is lost and Joe is lost and Mama cries when she speaks of it.

My sister flinched. —I am sorry your mama was sad.

—She is sad, Annabelle sighed. —Because her own Mam died, and her sister and brother were lost long ago. I don’t know how. Annabelle turned to me. —How, Mother? How were they lost again?