Philippa whispered, “It’s like we’re entering a horrible fairy tale.”
“So, where’s the evil queen?” I replied.
We moved through the house and into a cavernous solarium, humming with chatter and stuffy with body heat. Snippets of conversation floated around us—criticisms of the Chicago Tribune’s botched election headline, disappointment over Truman’s win, murmurs about Bogdan’s arraignment, admiration of the Closses’ stiff upper lips, and praise for Moira’s “brave choice” of white calla lilies over chrysanthemums at the funeral. How courageous.
In the corner, a tall man with thinning hair and caterpillar eyebrows was holding court—or perhaps preaching to the choir. “We’re already under attack from the inside,” he said in a vibrant and patronizing voice. “It will get worse before it gets better. HUAC is doing good work.” His audience leaned in, rapt. “We must look for weak places in our government agencies. Persons of feeble moral constitution who can be easily manipulated. Take, for instance, the homosexuals…”
Hearing enough, we moved on.
Multiple platters of canapés and other hors d’oeuvres radiated out from a polished silver punch bowl on a table in the center of the room. I was starving and needed a jolt of energy before approaching the Closses and miming an apology. Philippa and I made up plates, ladled out frothy orange punch, and hid behind a gigantic potted fern to wolf down the food.
As we ate, I spotted a man sitting in a wingback chair in the living room, which opened onto the solarium through wide French doors. He reminded me of a pug or even Rosie—nose crushed, eyes darting, ears bat-like. I felt a sudden stab of déjà vu. Recalling the conversation about HUAC I’d overheard, the party must’ve been lousy with politicians and Washingtonian elites, so I wondered if that’s why he struck a chord. And like that—bingo!—I knew who he was: the Director of the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover. Seriously. He was much smaller and slighter than he appeared in the newsreels. I nudged Philippa and nodded in his direction. She just shrugged.
After making the rounds to say hello to common acquaintances of the Closses, B and E hunted us down. “It’s time,” Edith said. “You need to get in line and tell Howard and Elaine how very sorry you are, and it better sound sincere.”
The receiving line began at the far end of the room. Shaded by a massive White Bird of Paradise, Howard and Elaine seemed guarded by the plant’s paddle-like leaves, as if it were ready to animate and gobble up anyone who might offend them.
“Judy, you must do this,” Edith said, screeching with desperation. In silhouette against the solarium’s condensation-coated walls, the Closses’ heads were bobbing like pigeons, their shoulders tightening and loosening with each handshake. Oddly, Moira Closs wasn’t there. “Philippa, you too,” Edith added. “If you don’t, I’ll tell your father about your little adventure at the graveside service. Both of you have pushed us to the limit.”
I glared at Edith and bit into my last salmon and cream cheese canapé.
“Do it!” she snapped.
A bevy of guests glanced in our direction.
From behind us, mink and hat removed, Moira materialized, as if out of a cloud of L’Air du Temps. Her makeup was fresh, expertly applied: arching eyebrows, lined red lips, a velvety sheen of powder, which smoothed her wrinkles into gentle character lines. Her deep blue eyes were uncanny, as if she’d harvested them from a younger woman.
“There you are!” she purred. “Judith and Philippa, I’m so glad you’ve come. My son and daughter-in-law will be touched.”
“I’m so sorry for you and your family,” Bart said.
She nodded. “We’ve both lost that which is most precious to us.” Her eyes gleamed with wetness. “Both you and Edith are such an inspiration, a model for how to see through this fog and understand… well, whatever we’re supposed to understand from this, if there’s any meaning at all,” she said, bringing her hand to her throat. Her pear-cut diamond ring winked at us.
Moved, Edith touched the woman on the elbow.
Moira flinched, then smiled apologetically.
So much of what Moira presented was polished artifice, but there was something in her expression: a trace of conflicting emotions? Sorrow? Horror? Rage? It was hard to say how she truly felt about her grandson’s death. Was Cleve the apple of her eye, or merely a fact, the heir apparent, a necessary vehicle for advancing the Closs name?
“Girls,” she said, “could you help me with something?” She looked at B and E. “Do you mind if I steal them for a minute?”
“Of course not,” Edith said.
I glanced at Philippa, who seemed curious and willing, so we followed her. The three of us passed through a large kitchen and into an oak-paneled study lined with books and more exotic collectibles. The air was thick with the odor of musty leather. Moira gestured to a low-slung leather couch. A portrait of a grim man in thick-framed eyeglasses and symmetrically parted hair peered down from above the flickering fireplace. Mr. Closs Sr., Moira’s late husband? We sat, and she stood in front of us, her black crepe de chine dress swaying against her legs. For a long moment, she studied us. I didn’t know what the hell was going on.
“So,” she said, in a businesslike manner, “look at you, a couple of Nancy Drews. You need more finesse, dears. My son is a sensitive man. Barging in and questioning Halo and Elaine like they were responsible for my grandson’s death was crude and rather cruel, don’t you think?”
“Halo?” I said.
“As a boy, he had mounds of fleecy golden hair, so I said he looked like he was wearing a halo. The nickname stuck.”
I laughed. The irony was too rich.
And like that, Moira popped like a balloon. She dropped her gracious hostess facade, descended on me, and took me by the chin, squeezing it firmly. “You!” she snarled, baring her tobacco-stained teeth. “Don’t be so superior, you little bitch. You don’t understand a damn thing about him or me or any of us. You have no idea what we’re going through. What we’ve been through!” I froze, blindsided. Moira’s protuberant eyes seemed huge and hungry, but they also exposed her. Had we frightened her? Were we closer to the truth than we thought? Although I was shaken, a part of me swelled with pride. I tried to pull away from her grip, but she pinched tighter, the purple veins on her hand bulging. “I know all about you,” she snarled, stepping close to the border of unhinged. “I know more about you than your parents do. I know more about you than you know about yourself.”
She released me, stepping back, her eyes cooling like blue flames running out of gas. I had no idea what she meant, but I was convinced it was true. “I know more about you than you know about yourself,” crashed through my skull. What did she know? Why tell me now? This way? “Whether you understand it or not, I’m dangerous to you. If I’m dangerous to you, I’m certainly dangerous to your friend here.” She shook her finger at Philippa, who was horrified by her outburst and shrank back, nearly in tears. My swirling brain snapped into focus. Fuck her for threatening Philippa. I wanted to scream or attack her with a fireplace poker, or even grab Philippa and dash. But instead, I just sat there, my rage and my astonishment at odds. As I write this, they still burn.
“This is what will happen,” Moira said, throwing her shoulders back. “We’re going to go out there. You’re going to tell your parents you apologized to me, and I promised to relate your heartfelt apology to my son and daughter-in-law. Then you’re going to go home and not bother us, any of us, again.”
Emboldened, Philippa shot up from the couch: “How do you expect us to ignore what your son did to Miss Martins?”
I liked her this way: strawberry curls bouncing, cheeks flushed, gray eyes bright like flash bulbs. There it was: the barb under all her girly trappings, that steely core of hers.
Moira didn’t flinch. She studied her, shifting her weight from leg to leg under her rippling dress. “What your Miss Martins has done to our family far outweighs what my son has done to her,” she said, tilting her chin up. “You have no idea.”<
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“I witnessed it,” Philippa spat. “I saw what he did to her.”
Tension rippled through Moira’s powdered jaw. She looked as if she were preparing to roar, but instead, she cocked her head and, like that, was back in supreme hostess mode. “Okay, dears, off you go.”
PHILIPPA, NOVEMBER 7, 1948
I spotted Judy sitting on the edge of Hill Estates, her legs dangling, staring at the narrow alley four stories below, zapped of her usual confidence. She’d already laid out the plank for me. But instead of crossing, I plopped down with the ten-foot gap between us, hung my legs over the edge, and faced her, a warm current of garbage-scented air flowing up between us.
For a time, we didn’t speak, then Judy raised her head. Her bangs were flat and low over her eyes. Her face was still and dark. I expected her to begin with our little tête-à-tête with Moira. She had to have her theories. Instead, she said, “You know those little scars all over my arms?”
“What?” I thought. “Wait. Where’s this going?”
She paused, her attention seeming to stray. “I think I know what made them.”
“Okay?” I said, keeping my voice level.
“Last night, a dream looped through my head like I had a fever.” She took a deep breath. “In it, I’m in this dark, musty place. There’s light, but it’s only faint. It’s coming from those horizontal slotted windows like the ones in bunkers. I can’t see the shadowy corners of the room. Then I hear this horrible noise. It’s that howl feral cats make, but it’s louder like there’s a lot of them. It’s relentless. Deafening. I try to run away from it, from them, but each time that I try, the sound gets louder and closer. I can’t breathe, and I panic, and I trip over something—that’s when I’d wake up. Every time. Eventually, I stopped trying to sleep.”
“What do you think it means?” I asked, wondering why it was coming up now.
“It was so real,” she added, picking at a loose bit of tar paper roofing. “To be honest, it didn’t feel like a dream.”
“You think it actually happened?” I asked and thought about what that MBBS girl said months ago in the cafeteria, my first introduction to Judy: “She kills stray cats. Drops bricks on them for fun.” Was this connected to that somehow? I glanced down at the strip of grimy black pavement below, cluttered with trash cans. The impact of a brick on a cat from this height wouldn’t be a pretty picture, and Judy’s aim would need to be impeccable. It was like a word problem from third period physics: If a brick is falling for 2.5 seconds, what will its final velocity be when it smashes a cat?
Judy flicked the tar paper into the alley. It fluttered out of sight. “I don’t know.”
I rose, walked across the plank, and sat beside her. “Is it coming back to you because… well, because of what happened yesterday? Sophie says that dreams are fragments of the past reordered to tell us something about the future. But who knows?”
She didn’t answer me.
“Maybe Miss Martins is right,” I said. “We don’t need answers. We should just stay away. Maybe we should listen to her.” I remembered what she told me to do about Judy: “Treat her like a good sister would. Be there for her, protect her.”
“I thought about what she told me,” Judy said as she continued to fiddle with the roof’s edge, tearing off little strips. “That I shouldn’t be ruled by my anger and then some bullshit about Greek myths. But this damn thing—whatever it is—has hold of me, not the other way around. How can I let go of something that’s latched on to me?” I sensed the anxiety vibrating through her. “And the Closses, they know what it is. Moira practically said it. B and E, too. We’re all part of this.” She looked at me. “You, too.”
“What do you think Moira meant when she said that what Miss Martins did to them was far worse than what Halo did to her?” Of all the details from yesterday, this was the one that I most wanted to hash out. I couldn’t imagine what Miss Martins had supposedly done.
“She knows that her son attacked Miss M,” Judy said, the eager investigator surfacing a little from her gloom. “But I don’t know what Miss M could’ve done to them. I’m sure it was justified.”
“I guess we’re going to find out what it was,” I said, leaning toward her, closing the space between us.
“Yes,” she said softly. “We’re going to find out everything.”
I rested my head on her shoulder, her bob tickling my cheek, and slipped my hand in hers. I wanted her to know that I was with her, that I accepted her, crazy dream and all. We’d get to the bottom of this, the two of us. We looked at the scatter of chimneys, the cloud-streaked sky, and the seagulls that had strayed too far inland as they caught an updraft. Everything felt still and perfect like we were staking a claim for ourselves in this spinning world. We were untouchable, and everything happening around us were just frames in a movie reel.
As we held hands, I thought about my classmates in San Fran, who had sniggered about men who went with men and women with women. Queers and dykes. For some, it’s a dire and incurable ailment. They’re institutionalized for life. I wondered if I’d be strapped to a bed and given shock treatment one day? Would a grim psychiatrist in a starched white lab coat hover over me with a syringe, ready to neutralize my feelings? Oh, I couldn’t imagine it. Besides, if it did happen, that wouldn’t be the worst of it. If Dad found out, it’d destroy him. He’d kick me to the curb.
No, I decided right then, I’m not like those poor, desperate people. As it is with others like me, these feelings are a passing affliction, a hiccup in our maturity, cured by time. My heart will change. My feelings for Thea, Miss Martins, and even Judy will fade. Each of them will be as they ought to be in relation to me—a fleeting acquaintance, a beloved teacher, and a best friend, accordingly. But, I thought, this brief aberration, this wrinkle in time, why not enjoy it while it lasts? Why turn away from it when, within months, it will turn away from me?
So, I leaned into Judy, her spicy, sweaty odor surrounding me. The same mysterious energy that she’d emanated on that first day in the cafeteria sank into me, and I wasn’t afraid of anything—not judgmental kids, not the white-coated doctors, not even Dad. Suddenly, nothing mattered except Judy. I squeezed her fingers and lightly grazed the side of her neck with my nose, sucking in her smell, hoping she would meet my lips with a kiss.
Instead, she leaned back. “Fuck, Philippa,” she said, disentangling herself. “I don’t know why you’d do that now.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“I need to think.” She stood and brushed off her backside.
“So sorry. I—” I lurched forward, and the alley rushed up to me. There, between the trash cans and debris, churned a sea of yawling, flea-infested cats, like the horror from Judy’s dream. A muscular spasm shot through me, and I grabbed the roof’s edge. I wasn’t sure whether I was gathering energy to fling myself off or hold myself in place.
“Watch it!” Judy grabbed my shoulder, and that’s what I needed to begin to breathe and move back from the edge. When I looked again, the cats were gone—if they’d even been there in the first place.
PHILIPPA, NOVEMBER 9, 1948
After dinner on Sunday, Sarah Yolland phoned us with bad news. Sophie fell and fractured her arm. Poor Sophie! She’ll be okay, and she’s already home from the hospital and on the mend. Thank God. Sarah found her sprawled on the bathroom floor, unconscious, with the bathtub overflowing. She must’ve fainted while drawing her bath. She’s been reacting poorly to her cancer treatments, having dizzy spells and endless nausea. We drove up today to check on her, despite my missing school.
When Sarah showed us into Sophie’s drafty east-facing room, soft light was pouring in. When I saw her, I knew that I couldn’t fall apart. It would be unfair. She was unexpectedly cheerful and propped up on a mountain of pillows. Her right arm was in a plaster cast, which rested awkwardly on a stack of small cushions. Her hair was teased, and makeup had been applied, perhaps to cover up bruising from the fall. Sarah’s doing, I’m sure.
“Sophie,” her father said and smiled. “You’re looking spry.”
“Thank you, Carl,” she said.
“Poor thing,” Bonnie said. “You certainly have been through an ordeal.”
“I’m still quite strong. I’ll heal with time.”
But that wasn’t true. On the drive, Dad had told me that her cancer was advancing. Although he didn’t want to trouble me, he said, I should know that Sophie may not make it through the New Year. I bawled, and Bonnie held me, running her hand through my hair. I felt so small, so helpless. I had the slightest inkling that, if anyone would, Sophie would understand my feelings about Judy or, at least, the intensity of our friendship. After all, she and Sarah had a close and lasting bond—not to say that it was a romantic relationship, but perhaps, she would have some insight. Or maybe that’s why she told me to stay away from her, in which case, I’d just get more of the same. Vague prognostications are useless to me.
After the five of us chatted about the hospital, doctors’ recommendations, her cancer treatments, the house’s upkeep, the weather, and even Thanksgiving plans, Dad, Bonnie, and Sarah excused themselves, giving me time with her.
“Come, Philippa,” she said, “sit over here, beside me.”
After sweeping a stray gray hair from her cheek, I climbed on the bed and leaned against one of the posters. I looked at her, lingering a bit, a mist of tears forming. In a bright voice, as if to ward off my sadness, she said, “Read to me.” I wiped the dampness away. “I want to hear your voice. What about one of your mother’s favorites?”
“Whatever you want.”
The Savage Kind Page 22
