Meg at Sixteen

by Susan Beth Pfeffer

  “Very well,” Mr. Bradford said. “Youth is so impulsive,” he declared to Aunt Grace as the teenagers left.

  “And age is repulsive,” Meg whispered, but Clark didn’t laugh.

  “You’re in it this time,” he said softly.

  “Locked in it,” Meg said.

  Clark took her hand and passed a note to her. “Think about everything Father has said,” he said in a normal voice. “Your aunt really does know what’s best for you.”

  “Yes, Clark,” Meg said. She tried desperately not to run up the stairs, to what had suddenly become the haven of her bedroom. Aunt Grace would be up momentarily, she knew, to check on her and lock the door. She had only moments to read the note, then find a place to hide it. But running would give away everything, so she paced her walk, not too fast, not too slow, and then left the door open behind her, the way Grace would want to find it.

  Dearest Daisy,

  It was a joy to see you, even in the rain. I love you, and will think about what you suggested.

  Nicky

  Meg clutched the note to her breast, then slipped it under her bed. Not even the sound of the key turning in the lock disturbed her. Nick would agree to marry her, and then there’d be no more prisons.

  CHAPTER NINE

  By Tuesday, Aunt Grace had decided Nick wasn’t about to abduct Meg, and she eased her niece’s restrictions. Meg was allowed out of her room during the day, and although she was locked in at night, and checked up on, she still reveled in her freedom. Playing the piano and walks in the garden were permitted again, and on Thursday, she was even allowed to go swimming. She was accompanied by two maids, and she wasn’t allowed to wander off of Grace’s private beachfront, but it didn’t matter. She could move again, and she had Nick’s note (cleverly hidden inside the toe of her right boot), to give her strength when she felt weakest.

  Clark was still on the proscribed list (although Meg was of the opinion Mr. Bradford had made that rule up himself), and no other friends dropped by, but that was all right too. Meg couldn’t imagine talking about anything other than Nick, and that was the one subject she knew was unwise to discuss. It was better to read and do needlepoint, take solitary walks and swims, than to destroy whatever chances she had left.

  She yearned to be with Nick, but the risk was too great, and without Clark’s cooperation, there was no way of making contact with him anyway. The day would come, Meg told herself again and again, the day would come when nothing Aunt Grace could think of would keep them apart. All Meg had to do was behave herself, so Grace’s defenses would ease, and then she could make her escape. Mrs. Nick Sebastian. Just weeks away, maybe even days. Meg Sebastian. She and Nick together forever. She had fantasies all day long of their home together, the sacrifices they’d happily make for each other, the joys they’d share in each other’s company. She had dreams at night of their lovemaking, not too explicit, since Meg was still a little hazy on the logistics of the act, but so full of heat and yearning that she’d wake up in her darkened room sweating with desire. Just weeks, she told herself. Maybe even days. And she held on to Nick’s note.

  Then on Friday, the amazing happened. There was a knock on the door, Delman opened it, and standing right there was Nick. Meg wanted to throw herself into his arms, his real, genuine, right-there arms, but Nick barely glanced at her, so Meg held herself back.

  “Miss Winslow is expecting me,” Nick said.

  “Yes, sir,” Delman replied. “Please come this way.” He led Nick into Aunt Grace’s sitting room, and Meg, not knowing what else to do, followed.

  “Ah good, you’re both here,” Aunt Grace said. “Sit down, Mr. Sebastian. Can I offer you something to drink? Some iced tea perhaps?”

  “No thank you,” Nick said. “May I ask why you sent for me?”

  “Certainly,” Grace replied. “Margaret, sit by my side.” So Meg did. The smell of Grace’s powder overwhelmed her, but she knew better than to show weakness.

  “As Margaret already knows, I have hired private investigators to check into your past,” Grace said to Nick, as though this were the most ordinary of announcements. “I’m sure you understand how important it is for me to learn the background of any young man Margaret expresses an interest in.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Nick said. “It’s not a habit my family ever got into.”

  “Ah yes,” Grace said. “Your family. I must say they made for most interesting and colorful reading.”

  Nick smiled. “I’m glad they’ve proved good for something,” he said. “But I still don’t see why you asked me here. You have the report. Fling it around if you want, but it’s no concern of mine. I certainly didn’t sanction it.”

  “No, you certainly didn’t,” Grace said. “And that is why you were invited. I knew I could show it to Margaret, and she would find the vast discrepancies between the fairy tales you told us and the sordid realities the detectives uncovered. But she might not believe the report. Margaret has shown herself the past few days to be disrespectful, defiant, almost to the point of instability. Both my brother Marcus and I are quite concerned about her and her future, a future which, I can assure you, does not include you.”

  “I’m still waiting for your point,” Nick said. Meg could hear the edge in his voice.

  “I want you here while Margaret reads the report,” Grace declared. “I have a copy for you as well, so if there are any inaccuracies, you can correct them. I don’t want Margaret to think I in any way have attempted to deceive her. She will read the truth along with you, and I’m sure once she sees you for the money-hungry liar you are, she will never dream of you again.”

  “Aunt Grace,” Meg said, but she had so many different things to protest, she couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “Margaret undoubtedly thinks of this as a public humiliation,” Aunt Grace said to Nick. “She’ll thank me for it one day. It is my obligation to save her from the likes of you.”

  “That’s funny,” Nick said. “I thought my obligation was to save her from the likes of you as well.”

  “I don’t want to read the report,” Meg said. “I’m sure everything in it is true. Please, Aunt Grace. Don’t make me read it.”

  “It’s for your own good,” Aunt Grace replied. “You are still a very young girl, Margaret, and innocent in the ways of the world. Mr. Sebastian is merely the first of what may well prove to be a long line of men chasing you for your money. You stand to come into a substantial estate, unless I’m forced to disinherit you, in which case you will be nearly as penniless as Mr. Sebastian. Men of his ilk can smell money. They don’t care whom they prey upon to satisfy their needs. Mr. Sebastian, coming as he does from an especially squalid background, has animal needs as well. I’m sorry you have to be exposed to such base human nature, but hard as I have tried to protect you, there is a wild streak to you, Margaret, no doubt encouraged by your parents, that forces me to take extra measures to save you from yourself. You know all I have done for you in the past, and you know all I am willing to do for you in the future. I suggest you read this report thoroughly. I shall observe your every response, and then discuss with Marcus what steps we should next take.”

  “I’m sorry,” Meg said to Nick, grieving that he should have to see her in such a weakened position.

  “It’s all right,” Nick replied. “The report should be amusing. My past is pretty much a farce.”

  “Your future undoubtedly will be one as well,” Grace said. She walked over to her desk, picked up two copies of the report, and handed one each to Nick and Meg. Meg hated just touching it, but with Grace’s eyes fixed on her, and knowing that one final glorious act of defiance could have her locked away for years, forced herself to begin to read.

  Nicholas George Sebastian was born George Nicholas Keefer on April 12, 1938. His mother was Mary Maud Keefer, aged twenty and two months at the time of his birth. His father was listed on the birth certificate as “unknown.” However, his father was Sebastian Taylor Prescott, a well
-to-do North Carolina businessman, whose secretary Miss Keefer had been. Miss Keefer accepted a payment of one thousand dollars, in exchange for which she did not list a father on her son’s birth certificate.

  Meg put the report down for a moment and willed herself not to give in to her nausea. It was bad enough seeing Nick’s pathetic story there on paper, where Aunt Grace could gloat over it. But to have Nick in the same room, reading those same cruel words, was almost more than she could stand. She glanced over to him, and saw that he was skimming the report, looking for which awful detail she couldn’t imagine, then reading the thing more thoroughly. If he felt pain or embarrassment, he wasn’t showing it.

  “Margaret,” Aunt Grace said. “We don’t have all day.”

  Miss Keefer boarded her son out with various relatives while she moved from city to city. In 1946, she met and married former Pfc Harold Clay, of Wilmington, Delaware. She brought George home to live with her. In 1947, Mrs. Clay gave birth to a son, Harold, Jr. In 1949 she had a daughter, Diane.

  Mr. Clay worked at various factories in the Wilmington area. He drank heavily and was reputed to have a violent temper. George’s school reports show he was a boy of unusual intelligence (his IQ was 148) but erratic temperament, occasionally doing brilliantly, frequently getting into trouble. It was believed family problems were at the root of George’s behavior, and in 1950, after a social services investigation, George was put in foster care for six months until his mother sued to regain custody.

  It was believed family problems were at the root, Meg thought, and her anger spread to include not only Grace and Marcus and Mr. Bradford, but those fools who looked at Nick’s beautiful scarred face and didn’t fight to save him. She hated not only his stepfather, Harold Clay, he had a name now, and his real father, Sebastian Taylor Prescott, who had a son and turned his back on him, but Nick’s mother as well, and his teachers and the social workers, and everybody who didn’t love Nick as she loved him. She wondered how many stories Nick had to tell, and how many he would ever be able to tell, even to her. She wondered how people could be so hateful.

  In January of 1954, Mary Keefer Clay died of cancer. While George Keefer’s legal residence remained with his stepfather, in actuality he spent little time there, and on his sixteenth birthday, all connections were officially severed. Keefer lived in foster care until the end of that summer, and then moved on to be on his own. He lived in flophouses, stayed with friends, and when he had the funds, lived at the local YMCA. During this time, Keefer worked at a variety of part-time jobs, while continuing to attend high school. He maintained the fiction that he was still residing at Clay’s address, and forged his stepfather’s signature to report cards.

  Nicky at sixteen, Meg thought. The age she was now. Meg knew she had suffered. The loss of her parents was something she felt every day, and suspected she would never completely get over. But everything else had been privilege. When her parents had died, there’d been no foster care, just genuinely concerned relatives. There was no disruption of her schooling. Even now, when she knew Marcus was disgusted with her, and Aunt Grace was at wits’ end, there was never a suggestion that she was no longer a family member. No flophouses for Margaret Louise Winslow. Just no love, no understanding. Well, hell, who needed love and understanding. See how far Nick had come without any.

  A complete list of keefer’s places of employment can be found at the end of this report (Document D). Among other jobs, he washed dishes, worked as a busboy, caddied at the local country club, and delivered groceries.

  No wonder they thought Isabelle would be attracted to him, Meg thought, then blushed at her disloyalty.

  Keefer’s work was regarded as satisfactory, and he left each job of his own volition. The general impression he gave was that he was “too good” for that kind of labor and that his ambitions were great. He had few friends, although it was agreed that he could be quite charming when he so chose.

  What are his ambitions, Meg wondered. What was it Nick wanted, other than her and Princeton. There was so much they still had to learn about each other. Whatever those ambitions were, Meg intended to be a full partner in them.

  Keefer graduated seventh in his class (his ranking at the end of junior year had been second). He had been admitted to Princeton, but had not requested scholarship aid.

  After graduating from high school, Keefer disappeared from sight for a month or so. He was next reported visiting the office of Sebastian Prescott. According to Audrey Williams, Mr. Prescott’s secretary, on August 3, 1955, George Keefer came to Mr. Prescott’s office, demanding an interview with him. Miss Williams said the resemblance between the two men was startling, and assuming that they must be related, she sent Keefer in. She was able to overhear much of their conversation. Keefer threatened to reveal his identity to Prescott’s wife, son, and daughter, unless Prescott paid for his education at Princeton.

  Meg put the report down again. She knew she was in virgin territory, that Nick had intended to tell her all this, but Clark had interrupted him, and they hadn’t discussed it since. She didn’t think Nick had mentioned this other set of a half brother and a half sister. How Nick must have hated them all, those four children who had fathers they could call their own. She knew something then that Nick himself might not have known, how important it was for him to have a family, and she vowed she would give him children who would love Nick as she did. More than anybody she knew, he was entitled.

  Miss Williams informed us that Mr. Prescott was at that time suffering from marital problems.

  Serves him right, Meg thought.

  Apparently he felt that keefer’s arrival in his family life was inopportune. However, he refused to give Keefer the full four-years’ tuition, instead making out a check for three thousand dollars, telling Keefer that that was all he’d ever see from him, and that if he knew what was good for him, he’d take the money, change his name, leave town, and never bother decent people again. Miss Williams informed us that she had never heard Mr. Prescott so angry. Disillusioned by the way he had treated his own, albeit illegitimate son, Miss Williams left Prescott’s employ shortly thereafter.

  We have been unable to find any records of George Keefer or Nicholas Sebastian for the next twelve months. In September of 1956, however, he registered at Princeton University as a freshman, under the name of Nicholas George Sebastian. He listed himself as an orphan, and paid the full year’s tuition himself, claiming he had received the funds from a trust fund set up for him by his former English teacher, Mr. John Wilson. There were no John Wilsons in the Wilmington school district that Keefer attended, so presumably he invented the entire story. Mr. Sebastian has not worked any part-time jobs since he began at Princeton, and his tuition is completely paid for the upcoming academic year, so he must have been able to increase the amount of his savings from that initial three thousand dollars. We are trying to determine if illegal activities were involved, but thus far have been unable to uncover any.

  Meg realized then that that was what Nick had skimmed through trying to find. There was a year of his life he hadn’t told her about, a year he didn’t want her to know of. Meg knew there was nothing Nick could reveal that would make her love him any the less, but the existence of that year frightened her. It was ironic that all the horrible facts about Nick’s parents and past had no power to scare her, but that the unknown year was Aunt Grace’s strongest weapon. Meg hoped she could keep Grace from finding that out.

  Mr. Sebastian is popular with his classmates at Princeton, and academically is doing quite well, with a 3.6 average. His friends there are of the impression that he comes from an impoverished but socially prominent family in the Midwest, that his father died on D-day, and his mother, his junior year in high school.

  I have no friends, he’d told her, and that was not a lie. How can you call someone a friend who doesn’t know anything honest about you.

  His lack of family does not seem to be held against him, and the feeling is he’ll do well in whatever field
he chooses to make his own.

  Meg realized she was crying. She slammed the report down, and prayed Nick wouldn’t misunderstand her tears. Since she wasn’t sure what the tears signified, she could only hope he knew her better than she knew herself.

  “I see you’ve finished,” Aunt Grace said. “I assume from the time you took, you read the report quite thoroughly.”

  Meg nodded. Aunt Grace handed her a handkerchief. It smelled of her powder.

  “The story you told us was quite different,” Aunt Grace said. “Can you account for those discrepancies, Mr. Sebastian?”

  Nick smiled. “I lied,” he said.

  “Then you do not dispute the detective’s report?” she asked.

  “It’s substantially accurate,” he said. “But I graduated fourth in my class, not seventh.” He paused for a moment. “That’s important to me,” he said. “It wasn’t easy, getting my schoolwork done that year.”

  “Fourth,” Aunt Grace said. “I shall inform the detective agency of their error. Are there any others?”

  “No,” Nick said. “It’s all there.”

  “I hope you’re satisfied, Margaret,” Aunt Grace said. “This young man, who presented himself as a paragon of virtue, from the finest families of the South and Midwest, is nothing more than the cheap by-product of a tawdry affair. Decent people come from decent families. It’s as simple as that.”

  Meg knew it wasn’t simple at all. She wiped the tears off her cheeks and hoped Nick had some understanding of how much she loved him, how unshakable that love was.

  “Well, Margaret,” Aunt Grace said. “I’m sure Mr. Sebastian is as eager as I am to learn your reaction to this report.”

  Meg wanted to tell Grace that she knew already all those miserable facts, that the one gift Nick had given her was honesty. She was about to say it when Nick shook his head almost imperceptibly, and Meg realized that Grace had made a fatal error forcing Nick to be there with her. Without Nick, Meg would have allowed her fury to control her, and Grace would have decided she was unstable (most ghastly of euphemisms). And in a way, Grace would have been right, because what Meg wanted to do was physically assault Grace, batter her, kill her if she could. The depth of her anger frightened Meg. There were so many emotions inside her she’d forbidden herself from feeling, and because of Nick, thanks to Nick, she could feel them all, the bad ones as well as the good. But Nick was there to protect her. Because of his love, Meg would never hurt Grace, would never hurt herself again. Because of Nick, Meg could feel and still survive.