The Four Ms. Bradwells

by Meg Waite Clayton

  At the same time, we couldn’t much believe it. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings had been published a dozen years earlier, but none of us had read it. We didn’t know that Virginia Woolf had been molested by a half brother when she was just six, or that Billie Holiday was raped by a neighbor when she was ten. No one wanted us to know those things happened, any more than we want Izzy or Annie or Gem to know now, although young girls do know so much more these days.

  We didn’t talk much about sex together even among ourselves back in law school, despite that business about Ginger hating to wake up next to a man she didn’t know. The rest of us felt too naïve and inexperienced to call her bluff, to poke at the hurt we must have begun to see underlying Ginger’s relationships with men long before that spring break. And that left us reluctant to talk about sex at all. Maybe that was why Ginger said it. Maybe it was her way of putting the topic of sex safely out of bounds. But maybe that’s just me longing to change history, to have whispered to Laney or Betts that Friday night over the Risk game board that I was going off to make love with Beau, rather than saying I was going to the lighthouse to look at the sky.

  How different would our futures have been if I’d simply told the Ms. Bradwells the truth? That I wanted to sleep with Beau even though I was engaged to Andy. That I wasn’t sure I wanted to marry Andy. That when Beau and I left the cottage that night, I knew we wouldn’t spend much time at the lighthouse. That long before he suggested we go to the boat, I knew I would sleep with him. I didn’t need to be seduced.

  I was careful to make sure we got back to the cottage before the Risk game would likely be over. I remember thinking, when I noticed Laney and Trey were gone, that that was a bad idea, that she ought not to have been flirting with a partner in the firm where she was going to work, much less go off alone with him.

  And then finding her in the bunkroom. Trying to get her to talk. Laney answering in single words, or less. Laney, who would do nothing but sit hunched over her books in her bedroom the rest of that term, who would abandon her plans to go to D.C. and take instead a low-paying city job in Atlanta, because she couldn’t sit in an office at Tyler & McCoy without being glad Trey Humphrey was dead.

  That was such an awful thing, to be glad a man was dead, but we’d all felt it. Or at least I had. Not thirty hours later he turns up with his guts shot out, and I was glad.

  But even with Trey dead, it could still happen again. There are men like Trey everywhere.

  Back in Ann Arbor, I’d tried to talk to Betts about what had happened, and maybe I could have if we’d still been sharing that little room in N Section, when we used to lie awake in the darkness and talk. But we each had our own room on Division Street, and when I’d worked up my nerve to tell her, when I’d said, finally, “Can I ask you something? It’s about Ginger’s brother Beau,” she’d given me such an unforgiving look, and she’d asked if I didn’t think I’d hurt enough people already that spring: “Don’t you think enough people have been hurt already this spring?” she asked. She’d said she had to get to class then, even though her class—Jackson’s International Law seminar—didn’t start for almost an hour. And she got up and left me sitting alone on the porch, sure finally that she must have seen me slip from the boat with Beau the night Trey died, sure she must be as disgusted as I was with the person I’d become.

  The irony is that the night she must have seen me—Saturday, after the party—I didn’t sleep with Beau. The night I did—the night Laney was raped—Betts and I had whispered together, still as close as we ever have been. “Is Ginger making this up?” Betts had asked while Ginger was in the bathroom. But it explained why Ginger and Trey had been gone such a long time that first night the guys arrived, getting the second skiff. It explained why she was as reluctant for us to befriend her cousin as she was to introduce us to that jerk she dated that first summer, and then the jerk’s younger brother, and even Ted. It made some little sense of her forever choosing total dicks over nicer guys. So often matters of sexuality are more complicated than we ever imagine. I’ve come to see that with my mom, with facing the choices I now see she made over the years to give Bobby and me a normal life, giving up her own happiness in favor of ours. She never did divorce Dad, but she held on to her summer wanderings until she began to let go of everything, until the only past left in her mind was that of her childhood, before breasts or periods or sex, when everything was simple and she was happy, never imagining she would have sexual desires of any kind.

  How does a thirteen-year-old make sense of anything a man does to her? How does any man begin to understand how vulnerable a young girl feels when her body is beginning to change in ways that confuse and horrify her, that cause boys and men she’s known her whole life to treat her differently, to become suddenly uncomfortable? How can any man understand how desperately we want just to fit into a world that we’re never quite sure we’ll fit into, how unsure even girls like Ginger who have mothers like Faith are about what women are supposed to be and do?

  There is, I’ve come to realize, nothing I wouldn’t do to help Betts get on the Court. A woman like Betts? How many of them can there be? There aren’t many people—male or female—as smart and thoughtful and, yes, empathetic as she is. Empathetic. That word was kicked around like a dirty old sock when Justice Sotomayor was being confirmed, as if an intelligent person who lacked empathy might be something other than a sociopath.

  And yet this whole disaster is my fault. Betts’s appointment is at risk because of me.

  Betts was wonderful with Laney that Saturday morning at Chawterley, when Laney woke to the horror of what had happened. She said in the most gentle way you could imagine that we supported whatever Laney wanted to do, or not do. She left no doubt that we believed her, that even Ginger believed her. That was probably why Ginger was ranting, Betts said: because she loved Laney, and she wanted to protect her, and she didn’t know how.

  Betts offered to go to Faith herself if Laney wanted her to, or to take Laney to the police. “We just want to help however you want us to, Laney,” she said softly, and yet underneath her words was a steeliness that left me with the startled sense that what she really wanted to do was shoot the bastard and have it over with.

  Maybe that’s hindsight, though. Maybe after Trey turned up dead I inserted something into my memory that wasn’t real in trying to make sense of what had happened, Trey turning up dead just when we all wanted him dead.

  Laney didn’t want to go home to her parents: her mother would know something was wrong and Laney couldn’t bear to tell her what happened. Laney’s father, who never was much for white guys who were attracted to his daughter, could not be trusted to know. Not that she said much of this. She nodded yes or no to our questions and suggestions. And when it became clear, through the nods, that she wanted to stay in the room until Sunday morning, and then she wanted to go back to Ann Arbor and pretend none of this had happened, Betts said she would let the rest of the house know that Laney was not feeling well, she would get her out of the party that night, and we’d leave the next morning, as early as we could.

  After Laney fell asleep again—or pretended to—Betts directed me to stay with her, and she disappeared. To ask for an aspirin, I supposed. To lay the groundwork for the claim that Laney felt unwell. It sure was taking her long enough, though. It was well over an hour before she returned, sallow-faced and silent.

  “What?” I asked. “Betts, where have you been all this time?”

  “I … I talked to Faith,” she said. “She won’t expect Laney at the party.”

  …

  THAT NIGHT, GINGER and Betts and I put on our dresses and went to the party, made small talk, avoided Trey and, with him, Frank and Doug and Beau. Even Ginger seemed to be avoiding Trey. When Beau finally caught up with me, he knew something was wrong. I see in retrospect what he must have imagined: that I was confused, or full of guilt or remorse for having slept with him.

  “I have to see you again,” he said. “When can I see
you?”

  I wanted to see him again, too, but I was engaged to Andy, we were getting married after graduation. And I loved Andy. I did. I couldn’t possibly walk away from my relationship with him for someone I’d just met, for nothing but one ill-considered night of great sex and perhaps nothing else. I couldn’t exactly take off for a weekend in Chicago before finals. Beau couldn’t come visit me in the San Francisco apartment Andy and I had already rented. If my sleeping with Beau was anything, it was wedding jitters. Cold feet.

  Still, I whispered for him to meet me on his mother’s boat, where we had made love after we left the lighthouse the night before.

  After everyone else was asleep the night of the party—Saturday night—I climbed from the top bunk and went out to meet Beau. I can’t imagine I meant to sleep with him in the aftermath of Laney’s rape, but I wanted to be with him, to have him hold me. I never imagined having him hold me would break the dam of mixed-up emotions, would leave me sobbing, “It’s my fault, it’s all my fault, if I’d been at the lighthouse like I told her I would, if I’d just not told her I was going there …”

  “What are you talking about?” he’d asked me over and over again.

  “Laney and Trey,” I managed, and maybe I said the word “rape” and maybe I didn’t, maybe he understood me and maybe he couldn’t make out a word I said, I don’t know. All I know is he wrapped me in his arms and kissed the top of my head and held me for a long time, until I’d cried myself out and the night was almost over and if I didn’t get back to the bunkroom I would be missed.

  When I slipped back into the room, Betts was standing by the window. I nearly had a heart attack seeing her there, looking out the window as if she’d been watching Beau and me.

  I quietly climbed into the top bunk, pulled the covers over me. Betts turned just as I’d closed my eyes, pretending sleep. I listened as she stood there for the longest moment. I was sure she’d seen me or heard me come in, that she knew I’d been with Beau. She stood there for an eternity before the soft inhale and exhale of her breath moved toward me. Then the bed sank as she settled into the bunk underneath me, and she pulled her covers up. Her breath never slowed, though. She lay there as I did, with the room lightening around us and no better idea than I had what to do, how to help Laney, how to make this right.

  MR. CONRAD—LOOKING uncharacteristically disheveled—came into the kitchen not much later that morning, as I was putting together snacks so we wouldn’t have to stop on the way back to Ann Arbor for anything other than gas. He looked to be in serious need of a couple of aspirin.

  “Are the other girls up yet?” he asked.

  I concentrated on the sandwiches I was making, afraid that if he focused on my face he would be able to tell everything: that his nephew had raped my friend; that I’d slept with his son. “We’re just about ready to take off,” I said.

  “To take off? Oh, Christ, you meant to leave early.” He poured himself a cup of coffee, measuring his words. “I’m afraid you girls will have to delay your departure for just a bit,” he said finally. “We’ve had some terrible news.”

  Dr. Pilgrim, one of the guests and an old friend of the family, had already examined the body; he had no doubt that it was an accident, from the close range of the shot, the gun-cleaning equipment found beside Trey, the fact that he’d been hunting that day, and the almost-empty glass of scotch beside the cleaning equipment. But all the guests needed to stay until the police, who were on their way from the mainland, could determine which of us they might need to question.

  We had a long drive home, everyone knew that, Mr. Conrad said, but the police boat ought to arrive at the pier any moment, and he would make sure that if they needed to talk to anyone, they would talk to us first.

  “Will you send Ginger down?” he asked, and then, after a long pause as he tried to rein in his emotions, “I don’t know how I’m going to break this to her. Trey has been like a brother to her her whole life.”

  Betts

  THE LANTERN DECK, COOK ISLAND LIGHTHOUSE

  SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9

  GINGER AND I remain standing on the lantern deck with Laney for some time. Our silent friendship a balm for the memory of “nigger slut” and “It wasn’t that way,” I hope. There aren’t words to say to bring comfort. There is only touch. So we stand touching her. Looking out at the water that was purple at dawn. That is now an unwelcoming green.

  “Shit, it’s the press,” Ginger says. She points. “That boat. It’s heading straight for Chawterley.”

  Laney lets go of my hand. Raises it to shade her eyes. “It might be the girls,” she says. But she doesn’t believe that, really. And Ginger doesn’t recognize the boat.

  “We should head back to the house, anyway,” Ginger says. “It’s probably neither, but Mia will be wondering what happened to us.”

  “Maybe not,” I say. “She’s with Max.”

  Ginger frowns. Which ticks me off. After all these years you’d think Ginger would be able to let go of the need to have every man within sight want her. It’s pathetic, really. She’s not happy in Cleveland either. I’ve visited her enough over the years to see that. She’s fifty-two years old and she still doesn’t know what she wants. Even Mia, who never knew what she wanted when we were young, has settled into a life that suits her.

  “I think there’s pretty definitely something starting there,” I say.

  “Then you’d best wave goodbye to Mia,” she snaps. “Max’s boat is heading out. And, shit, isn’t that another one coming in? Another two?”

  She’s right. A boat is just heading out from down island. Near Max’s house. Two others loom at the horizon. I slip back inside the lantern room. Away from the cameras. We’re almost certainly too far away to be caught on film. But who knows?

  I try to imagine what I’m going to say to the press as Ginger leads us down the winding steps. I’m the one who is going to have to say whatever is said. I’m the one they’ll look to for explanations. I’m the one being considered for the Court. And I’m the one—the only one—who knows the facts. The only one who has kept silent. I only meant to protect Laney. Not to bury a crime I wasn’t even sure was a crime. But that won’t be the way it’s seen.

  So what do I do here? Do I stick to the story we’ve been telling all these years? The story we’ve been declining to tell, pretending there isn’t any story. Do I stick to a story I know isn’t quite true?

  I remember what Faith said that Saturday in the Captain’s Library: The press can make a nice girl into a slut without even trying. I’d thought she was talking about Laney. But she was talking about Ginger, too. She was talking about us all. How much it must have angered her that it was still true thirty years later.

  MIA IS JUST heading out the Chawterley door to find us when we return from the lighthouse. That silly plastic camera in her hands. We duck back inside. Scatter to close drapes. Lock windows and doors. We peek through the blinds in the Sun Room to see four boats drawing closer.

  “So what’s the plan?” I ask.

  “If we’ve learned anything from politicians lately,” Ginger says, “it’s that if you keep repeating even the most ridiculous statements over and over, people eventually believe they’re true.”

  It is what is better in this country, Elsbieta: the rules apply to all the peoples.

  So much of life is guided by chance. Outside our control. There are so many things we can’t stop or can’t see that we should change. Laney’s rape. Zack’s death. Mia’s marriage to Andy. Ginger’s relationship with Trey. We’re all scarred by every one of those things because they happened to us or they happened to someone we love. I suppose it’s those scars that make us refuse to step back and allow things we don’t want to happen to take their course just because the law requires it. Which is an untenable position for a judge to hold, of course. I do see that.

  Is that what we were doing that spring break? Putting ourselves above the law? We didn’t see it that way. We thought we were putting our reput
ations before our rights in a way that had nothing to do with anyone else. Making choices that hurt no one. That saved us from hurt. The facts had changed, though. Trey had turned up dead. A different set of facts we never stopped to consider.

  The first boat arrives. A wiry guy jumps onto the pier and secures a large powerboat across from the Row v. Wade as a string of eight or ten more boats streams toward us. A heavyset guy hands a TV camera up. A perfectly coiffed blonde emerges from the cabin.

  “ ‘We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde / who comes on at five.’ ” I sing off-tune. Even Matka would tell you that.

  “That’s no bubblehead.” Mia raises her wreck of a camera and eyes me through the viewfinder. She doesn’t take the shot. “That’s Fran Halpern.”

  Fran looks a bit sick to her stomach. I take some small pleasure in that.

  Another boat is not far behind them. Someone shouting from the bow. One of the crew in the first boat yells back, “We’re unloading as fast as we can!” But the last of the crew is dawdling. Checking around to make sure all the gear has been unloaded. Which it has. They have everything to gain and nothing to lose by stalling. Their camera is already rolling on Ms. Halpern. As long as their boat is tied up to the pier there isn’t room for another to dock.

  “Imagine how well exclusive footage of a still house front plays on television,” I say.

  Ginger points out that it’s actually the back of the house.

  “Saturday is a slow news day,” Mia says. “You’d be surprised what they’ll run.”

  I hesitate as we head toward the servants’ stairs. I have half a mind to stick my head out the door and tell these bastards they’re trespassing on private property. But they would take my photograph before I got a word out. And who knows how they’d twist anything I might say. What would I say, anyway? That if they didn’t leave I’d call the police? There are no police on Cook Island. A blessing in 1982 coming back to bite us.