Seidel, Kathleen Gilles (40 page)

Her eyes had not yet adjusted to the darkness and she could not see the frame, but in her mind flashed an image, not of her father's picture, but of the handwritten poem that faced it, the last stanza of William Butler Yeats's "Easter, 1916."

In 1916 Irish nationalists revolted against the British government, a heroic failure that ended with the execution of some of the leading nationalists. In the poem the speaker is first repelled by how the rebels' commitment to the political cause has changed them; the sweet have grown strident, the beautiful, haggard. Then, in the last stanza, he grows to understand and commemorate them.

Jill loved the poem because her father had. Its attitude toward the dead—that the living must remember, must honor the dreams of the dead—always brought back the memories of going to funerals with him, standing close to him under his big black umbrella, feeling his arm around her childish shoulders, listening to the minister say the final words.

But as the words of the poem marched through her mind on this dark Virginia night, she felt as if they were a comment on the way she lived. She had no single, central passion, and she didn't understand those who did—the Iranians who had thrown themselves into Khomeini's grave; the homeless activists on hunger strikes until death—there was a fervor and intensity in those lives that Jill didn't understand, that she didn't want. But it wasn't a choice. She was incapable of such passion.

This poem made her aware of the cost. Her life, so pleasant, so full of kindness, comfort, and friendship, lacked the vividness, the intensity, the terrible beauty of the Irish Rebels.

There was more to life than she had ever dreamed of, a huge, crystal lake, icy cold on a humid day, a lake in which people were swimming and playing, in which they were finding happiness. Staying on the shore were other people, some unable to swim, some hating the way they looked in a bathing suit, unwilling, unable to join those playing in the water.

Jill was on the shore. She had built a nice, pleasant life for herself, but always with her back to the lake, not admitting that it was there. And, worst of all, she had persuaded Doug to join her on the shore.

But life was better for the people in the lake. How was she going to get the courage to jump in?

CHAPTER 17

On June of 1863 the seventy thousand men of the Army of Northern Virginia, under the leadership of Robert E. Lee, crossed the Potomac River and invaded the North. With the long shadows of the Blue Ridge screening their movements, they marched up through Hagerstown into Pennsylvania. On July 1, in the rolling hills surrounding a small town, they met the Army of the Potomac. It was there at Gettysburg that the South lost the Civil War.

Much was planned to commemorate this most momentous battle of that long-ago war. Doug and Randy, Jill had long since learned, were the most casual of re-enactors, occasionally linking up with Randy's brother-in-law's unit. They had done nothing since New Market. Brian, Randy's brother-in-law, was urging them to come to Gettysburg.

"We need numbers," Brian declared. "Last year it was crawling with Yankees. Don't you want to be a part of Pickett's Charge—the high-water mark of the Confederacy?"

"Yes," Doug answered. "In a blue coat." Earlier in the summer, in the days when they were still laughing, he had presented Jill with the Doug's Digest condensed version of the Civil War: Robert E. Lee had had only three bad days in his entire life; unfortunately, they were all at Gettysburg.

"Why don't you go?" she said. "You'll have fun." He must miss the company of other men, the afternoons spent in the gym with his players, the evenings spent in coffee shops with his coaching staff. As little as he might have in common with the other re-enactors, they created a masculine world.

Randy was shaking his head. "It's too long a trip for one day. We can't leave—"

Jill interrupted. "I'll take care of the chickens. You've been saying all summer how good this group of high school kids is. We'll get them to stay a little longer. I know the routine; they do too. We'll be fine. Go on the day before so you can camp out with everyone."

So, after the eggs were loaded later in the afternoon on the first Friday in July, Doug and Randy came back to the house to prepare themselves to invade the North. This time Randy was the pretty mama's-boy, putting on the dress uniform with the gilt braid and brass buttons. Doug was too tall for the tattered butternut that Randy had worn at New Market and so Brian had dropped off a battle uniform of plain grey.

Jill walked out to the truck with them, watching them sling their haversacks into the back. Randy was bombarding her with last-minute instructions.

"Shut up," Doug told him flatly. "She can handle it. You know that. And if she does kill them all, she can buy you new ones."

That was enough for Randy and he went back into the house for the ice chest, leaving Doug and Jill alone. Doug was suddenly busy with something in the truck. Jill watched his back as he worked. She liked this plain, neat uniform, the grey collar stiffened by rows of stitching rather than satin facing. He slammed the tailgate and turned around. He was facing her, not quite looking at her. "Randy trusts you, but it's all—"

"I know." How could she ever have confused Doug for Bix? Now she was so aware of the differences. Doug was taller. The soft lower lip that they shared was more sensual in Bix. Bix's cheekbones were sharper, his eyes deeper set. Bix's face was more dramatic, Doug's more open. She had had a mad crush on Bix; Doug she loved.

He put his hands in his pockets. Jill wasn't sure what to say. He drew a line through the dust with the heel of his boot. How awful this would be if they really were soldier and sweetheart, parting perhaps forever, with this sad grey mist between them.

He scuffed through the line with his toe. "I know I don't have to say this, but you will be here when I get back, won't you?"

Jill's eyes flew to his face. Would she be here? How could he ask that? "Of course I will be."

"I know. I know," he spoke quickly, apologizing. "I didn't mean that. Really..." He tilted his head back, squinting up at the afternoon sun. "I believe in you, I do. It just doesn't make sense, your being here, selling flowers and sorting eggs, not with your money."

"If you start thinking that way, then it's hard for anything to make sense. What should people with money do? The money lets me be where I want to be, and, at the moment, that is here with you."

His arms came around her, pulling her close to him, tight and hard. His kiss was a soldier's kiss, full of glaring light and sun-hot passion, but when he stepped away, the grey mist was still there.

Randy came back outside, balancing the cooler on one shoulder. He heaved it into the truck and in a moment the doors were slamming and the engine was churning. Jill watched the truck rumble down the lane, the tires spitting pieces of gravel. Then it turned onto the county road, disappearing a moment later over a rise.

She wasn't going to leave. Not just this weekend, but ever. He wasn't going to, either. They were both the most loyal of people; they would be together until one of them died. What was at stake was not their relationship, but the quality of it. She knew that they would be together. Would that togetherness make them happy?

Right now, no. Things were not working. There was compatibility without intimacy. Holding them together was the sense of how close they were to something truly fine. Beyond the grey mist was a land of beauty and willows, a land lovelier than anything Jill had dreamed of. The perfume of what might be echoed lilac and lavender; it was a perfume speaking of a time when the moon would glow more golden, when the wild roses would smell sweeter.

Wasn't this what she had wondered about, a love stronger than reason? She had never understood her friends who stayed in relationships that weren't working, relationships sustained by hope's promises and nostalgia's lies. She understood now. She and Doug would stay together for their lives, bound by an illusion that was too precious to give up.

As she stared at the empty blacktop road—a dark ribbon rising between the cedars and the fields—Jill felt she was at a crossroad. She had the sense that this was the last possible moment to turn the other way... but however much she knew she was at the crossroads, she could see only one way—the straight line ahead.

She went back into the house, letting the screen door close behind her. Then, as if the screen alone wasn't quite enough protection from the future, she dropped the little hook into the latch eye. She crossed the kitchen into the bathroom, showered, and then went upstairs to dress.

The last bit of afternoon light threw a slanted rectangle of brightness across the planked floor of the front bedroom. Jill dropped her towel, and as she reached into the closet for her clothes, she caught sight of herself in the mirror Doug had hung on the closet door, a glimpse of the perfect ectomorphic build that she had inherited from her mother.

Why did she always think that? Whenever anyone praised her willowy neck, her delicate wrists, her slender arms and shapely legs, the elegance of her hands and feet, every time, every single time, she always mentioned her mother. Why?

Because of the price her mother had paid for this lovely body. Was that it? Had she always dreaded that the legacy had come to her with the same curse?

But it hadn't. She had set herself a test this summer and had passed it so easily that she had forgotten that it was even a test. Every Wednesday, week in and week out, she had gone riding with Allison. She had loved it, but she had done it only once a week. It was possible. She was going to be able to ride again, letting horses be part of her life, knowing that they wouldn't take it over.

She did not have an addictive personality. She had survived the bleak days after her father's death, she had endured the dull ache of her failure with Doug without giving into any obsessive behavior. She hadn't drunk more than usual, she hadn't taken pills, she hadn't cleaned too much, worked too hard, had too many manicures.

Her body wasn't booby-trapped. It was exactly what it appeared, a graceful human form, a blessing not just for its beauty, but for its health. It was a gift, not something that she was going to have to pay and pay for. Her mother had already paid, and she had passed it along to Jill, unencumbered, unmortgaged.

A pounding on the front door broke into her thoughts. "Jill, Jill." The screen door rattled in its jamb. "Jill, are you there? The door's locked."

It was Doug.

She pulled a sundress over her head and ran down the stairs. Through the mesh of the door she could see him, still in grey battle dress, his hair rumpled and wild.

"Come on, hurry," he was saying. "Charles found it, the script, he found it."

Jill fumbled with the hook. "He found it? The script? Where?"

Doug pushed open the door, and in his hand was a script bounded in tattered, faded blue. "I don't know, among some of Alicia's things, somewhere. We were supposed to pick him up. He said he wanted to go to Gettysburg, but when we got there, he'd already gone. He left this with a note, saying that he'd decided to look once more."

The edges of the script's blue paper cover were tattered. "Weary Hearts, Final Shooting Script, April 14, 1948." And then, in neat lettering, behind the typescript had been written,
for Miss Burchell,
and around her name was a Bix doodle, another Art Nouveau-like tangle of peacock feathers and flowering vines.

This was it, what they had been looking for all summer.

"But surely Alicia would have taken—" Jill stopped. The report that Alicia had taken all of the scripts on the plane with her had been Charles's, and Jill was now sure that that was as false as nearly everything he had told them. She rifled the script's yellowing pages. The margins and the backs of the pages were covered with Alicia's flowing handwriting.

"What's in it?" she asked. "You read it, didn't you?"

"I tried. I sat down on my grandmother's front steps and tried, but I couldn't make any sense of it. I guess I was too excited and all the 'cut to's' and 'fades,' and then everything Alicia had written, it was too much. I couldn't. But you'll be able to read it, won't you?"

Jill nodded. Already she was looking at the cast of characters. As would be expected, it was exactly the same as in the dummy treatment that John Ransome had found. She turned to the first page of text. Doug moved closer. His shadow fell across the page.

"I can't do this with you staring at me," she said.

He winced. "Okay, I'll be inside."

Already reading, Jill moved across the porch and lowered herself into the swing.

"You'll call me the second you're through?"

She waved him off.

As experienced as Jill was at reading screenplays, it took her several pages to get the rhythm of reading this one. There were more details about camera angles and sets than in screenplays written today, and the handwritten notes were distracting. Most were in Alicia's hand, but some were in Bix's and a few—jolting, jarring, shockingly—were in Cass's. This script must have been sitting on that table next to the glasses from
Casablanca.

Jill forced herself to ignore even her father's notes, and by the end of the first scene it would have been painful to do otherwise, so completely was she caught by the power of the script.

The basic plot was similar to the final version. Booth and Phillip tossed a coin, Booth went to war, Phillip stayed home. Phillip fell in love with Mary Deas and, as Jill had always guessed from the date of Don Pleasant's birthday, together they had a child.

But this was not a story of their love. Their romance was one tiny strand, hardly more than a few scenes, in a dense tapestry about heroism—Booth's heroism. He was indeed the leading character.

Booth rode to war, a quiet man with an orderly soul. Yet he was no isolate; there was a vigor about his movements that connected him to others. He loved his wife with a passion of both the body and the soul. He was at home at Briar Ridge, entirely suited to his life there, master of the horses and servants, partner to his brother, lover of his wife.