Maria
J
ulie and Lucy were waiting for me in my living room when I got home from Micky D’s. I’d planned to change my clothes and head to the hospital to do my volunteer work, but they said they needed to talk to me and I knew by their serious faces that I’d better cancel my plans.
“What’s wrong?” I asked them. There was way too much going on in my family for my comfort level. My best guess was that the police were finally ready to question me about Isabel and that made me nervous, but I tried not to let it show.
“We just want to talk to you,” Julie said.
Bullfeathers,
I thought, but I didn’t push her for the truth. I would find out soon enough.
Lucy called the volunteer coordinator at the hospital to cancel my shift, while I changed out of my uniform in my bedroom.
When I returned to the living room, the two of them were sitting in the armchairs near the sofa looking so grim that my heart began to pound. I sat down on the sofa, folding my hands in my lap.
“Now,” I began, “what is going on?”
“We need to talk to you about Isabel’s death,” Lucy said.
“Are the police ready to interview me?” I asked.
“No,” Julie said, “but Lucy and I made a discovery we thought you should know about. We wanted you to hear about it from us first, rather than from the police.”
I was quiet and calm on the outside, but my hands began working at one another in my lap.
Julie reached into her pocketbook and pulled out some kind of toy.
“What’s that?” I leaned forward, and Julie held the toy in the air so I could see it better. “Is it a giraffe?” I asked.
“Yes.” Julie lowered the red and purple toy to her knees. “Lucy and I stayed at Ethan’s house last night, and we talked to the people who now live in our bungalow.”
I felt a sharp blow to my solar plexus at the mention of our old summer home.
“Do you remember my Nancy Drew box?” Julie asked. “The bread box where I used to put any clues I found?”
Bread box? I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“I remember you used to collect clues,” I said. “You did that when we lived here in Westfield. Did you collect them down the shore, too?”
“Yes,” Julie said. “Grandpop found an old bread box for me to keep the clues in, and he buried it for me in the yard.”
“I don’t remember that,” I said.
“Well, it was something I kept secret,” Julie said. “But any
way, when we visited the people who live in the house now, I asked if I could dig up the bread box. When I did, we found this giraffe inside it. But I don’t think I ever put it there myself.”
I felt as though I was struggling to make sense of a riddle. “So?” I asked.
“Well, this comes apart.” Julie did something with the giraffe’s tail and the toy broke into two pieces. “Ned and Isabel used to pass it back and forth, with notes inside it.”
“Oh,” I said, more to myself than to them. I had tried so hard to keep those two children apart, and until the very end, I’d thought I’d succeeded.
“We found a note inside it,” Julie said. She removed a folded piece of paper from inside the back end of the giraffe. “Should I read it to you or do you want to see it for yourself?” she asked me.
I reached out a hand. “I want to see it,” I said.
She looked reluctant to turn the piece of paper over to me, but after a moment’s hesitation, she stood up and dropped it into my hand. I unfolded it and flattened it on my lap, adjusting my glasses so that I could read the faded writing.
“Oh,”
I said again, this time with some distress as I saw Isabel’s girlish handwriting. Then I read the words and was filled with horror.
Oh, my God.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Julie said. “I know it’s painful to read.”
“Our best guess is that this was Isabel’s last note to Ned,” Lucy said. “Maybe Ned put the note in Julie’s Nancy Drew box, expecting her to look in there before we left the shore. He had to know she’d take it to the police, who would then realize that Isabel had been angry at him, and that he probably did meet her on the—”
“Hush,” I said, shutting my eyes.
The room grew so still I could hear my own breathing.
“Would you rather not talk about this, Mom?” Julie asked softly. Neither she nor Lucy could possibly understand the reason for my distress. I was going to have to tell them things I’d never wanted known.
I opened my eyes again and looked first at Julie, then Lucy.
“I am as certain as I can be that this note was not meant for Ned Chapman,” I said.
“Oh, Mom,” Julie said, “I’m sure it was. I’m sure—”
I held up my hand to stop her. “I have to tell you girls something. It’s…I’d hoped I’d never have to tell anyone about it. It’s something I regret. But it needs to come out.You need to know.”
“What are you talking about?” Lucy asked.
I looked down at the note in my lap, touching the paper my Isabel had once touched, and I knew my eyes were glassy when I raised my eyes to my daughters again.
“I wasn’t just friends with Mr…with Ross Chapman when we were kids,” I said. “We dated as teenagers, as well.”
“You did?” Julie asked.
“We did,” I said. “But his family didn’t approve of me because I was half Italian, so we had to see each other on the sly for years.”
“Like Ned and Isabel,” Lucy said.
“Were you in love with him?” Julie asked.
I nodded. “For a while, yes. And I was always…I was attracted to him.” I felt uncomfortable. I’d never talked to Julie or Lucy about this sort of thing before. “But I knew he was shallow because he let his parents dictate who he could or could not see,” I said. For a moment, I got lost in my memory, and the girls were patient as they waited for me to come back.
“I married your father in 1944,” I said, “but that summer, I…I had relations with Ross.”
“Oh, Mom,” Lucy said, and I heard sympathy rather than condemnation in her voice.
“It might have been what they call date rape today,” I said. “Like what happened to Ethan’s daughter. I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I went along with him at first and then realized what I was doing…what we were doing…and told him to stop, but he didn’t. I’m so ashamed to tell you this,” I said, unable to look either of them in the eye.
“Oh, Mommy.” Julie moved to the sofa, sitting close to me, and I was touched that she had called me “mommy,” that the endearment just spilled out of her that way. She rested her hand on my shoulder, a little awkwardly, but I loved the touch. “You were young,” she said. “Things like that happen. Don’t be ashamed.”
“I am, though,” I said. “The terrible thing is that, a few months later, when I realized I was pregnant, I wasn’t sure if the baby was your father’s or Ross’s.”
I saw my daughters look at each other as the meaning of my words dawned on them.
“Isabel might have been Mr. Chapman’s daughter?” Lucy asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I never knew for sure. Your father and I…well, we made love nearly every weekend during that time and I’d only been with Ross once, but I still was never sure whose child I was carrying.”
Isabel had been born in April. She’d been fair, like Ross, but Charles had thought nothing of it. To him, she was his little angel, while I feared she was proof of my sin. When we took her to Bay Head Shores in late June, Ross took one look at her, did a little math in his head and figured she was his. I could see it in his eyes.
“Her hair was light when she was born,” I continued, “but you
know how dark it got as she grew older, and she had your father’s straight nose. Still, I was never completely certain.”
“No wonder you wanted to keep Ned and Izzy apart!” Julie exclaimed. “You poor thing. That must have been terrible for you.” Her hand was on my shoulder again, this time rubbing me gently through the sleeve of my jersey. It felt so comforting.
“Could you talk to anyone about it, Mom?” Lucy asked. “Any of your girlfriends?”
I shook my head. I knew Lucy would find such a lack of confidantes unbearable. She
had
to talk to people about whatever was going on with her. If she got a pimple, she would find herself a pimple support group. But all I cared about back then was
not
talking about it. I desperately needed to keep my indiscretion to myself.
Lucy moved to the couch, sitting next to me on the opposite side from Julie. “I’m so glad you’re telling us now,” she said.
I could smell each of them—Lucy and her lemony shampoo, Julie and her subtle floral cologne. I had never before felt the way I did at that moment—comforted, supported and understood by my daughters. I knew they were shocked by what I had told them, but I felt no blame from them. I loved my girls.
I took one of their hands in each of mine and raised them both to my lips.
“Thank you, dears,” I said. “But there’s more you need to know.”
1962
The summer Isabel died was, for obvious reasons, the worst summer of my life. Even before her death, though, I was deeply troubled. Isabel had grown difficult over the previous year. It was normal adolescent behavior, I knew, but still challenging to
deal with and I was not good at it. I was so worried about her that I clamped down too hard and she fought back like a caged animal. I was particularly concerned that she was getting too close to Ned. I prayed every night that they were not brother and sister, and in my heart of hearts, I felt certain they were not. Yet I knew the chance existed and felt it was my duty to keep them apart. The more I tried, though, the more Izzy fought me.
The evening before Isabel’s death, my parents took Julie and Lucy to the boardwalk and Charles had already left for Westfield. I thought I heard a knock on the screen door of the porch. I was washing dishes in the kitchen, and I turned off the tap to listen.
“Maria?”
I knew the voice. I only heard it those days when Ross was in his yard with his sons or his wife, but I knew it all the same.
I dried my hands on a dish towel, then walked through the living room to the porch. Ross stood outside, his face close to the screen, his hand over his forehead so that he could see into our bungalow.
“Hello, Ross,” I said, standing a distance from the door.
“Can I come in?” he asked. “I need to talk to you.”
I pushed the screen door open, and he stepped onto the porch. In retrospect, I should have gone into the yard with him. Everything might have turned out differently, if only I’d not let him in.
Ross looked nervous, or at least as nervous as a State Supreme Court chief justice was capable of looking.
“I saw your parents leave with the girls,” he said.
“They’ve gone to the boardwalk.”
“Did Isabel go with them?” He looked behind me as if he might see her standing there.
“No,” I said. “She’s out with her girlfriends.”
He looked relieved. “Good. I need to talk to you.”
“Yes, you mentioned that.” I was standing with my arms folded across my chest, conveying, I was certain, a tired sort of impatience.
He glanced toward the end of the porch that faced his bungalow. “Can we go inside?” he asked quietly.
I followed his gaze in the direction of his house. I could see no movement on his back porch, but it was apparent that whatever Ross wanted to say to me, he wanted to say in private. I gave in.
“Come into the living room,” I said.
He followed me inside the house, then sat down on the wicker rocker and rubbed his chin. I leaned against the side of one of the upholstered chairs rather than sit down myself. I didn’t want this conversation to be long.
“Listen,” he said. “I’m certain that Ned and Isabel are involved…romantically.”
Did he mean they were having sex? “I don’t think so,” I said.
“You’ve got your head in the sand,” he said. “She and Ned are together more than you know. More than
I
knew. Ethan told me they sneak around to be together.”
My heart gave a great
thump.
“Maybe Ethan is trying to get his big brother in trouble,” I suggested. “I always know where she’s going and who she’s with and she’s good about keeping to her curfew.” That was nonsense, but I wasn’t going to let him know I’d lost control of my daughter.
Ross smiled at me. “Your parents and mine would have said the same thing about us when we were Isabel and Ned’s ages, don’t you think?”
I looked away from him. He was right.
“Humor me for a moment,” he said. “Pretend that I’m right about Isabel and Ned being involved. Then you and I would need to find a way to put an end to their relationship, wouldn’t you agree?”
I had spent the early part of the summer making sure Izzy and Ned were
not
involved, and until this discussion, I’d thought I had succeeded. But now I was faced with a different problem: I was unwilling to admit to Ross that Isabel actually might be his. I was ninety-percent certain she was Charles’s child, but that ten percent haunted me.
“I do agree,” I said, “because of the very,
very
slight possibility that…you know. But it’s moot, because I’m certain she’s not seeing him. I would know. I would—”
“Would you
wake up,
Maria?” He stood up, his voice loud, his hands moving through the air. “She doesn’t look a thing like Charles.”
“She doesn’t look like you, either,” I said. “She looks like me.”
“She has my mother’s chin and cheekbones,” Ross said.
“Oh, stop it.” I covered my uneasiness with a laugh. “Why don’t you go home and—”
“I am
not
allowing my son to screw his sister!” he shouted, his face red.
I was furious. “Get out,” I said. I walked across the porch toward the door. “Get out right now.”
He stared at me a moment, then walked past me onto the porch. “You better hope she doesn’t turn up pregnant,” he said.
Once he was gone, I let out my breath and was rubbing my hands over my eyes when I suddenly heard a sound coming from the attic. I froze. Footsteps skittered across the attic floor and I turned to
see Isabel on the stairs. They swayed and creaked beneath her as she rushed to get down them, and I pressed my hand to my mouth.
“What were you
talking
about?” she shouted as she jumped the last few steps to the floor.