“Amelia!” Seth called just as she was about to step through the door. “It’s just as well your husband was killed. He spared you the humiliation of having him walk out on you!”
For an instant Billie thought Amelia would crumple to the floor and fragment into a thousand pieces. But she caught at the door frame and steadied herself. “You should know, Pap. Didn’t Mother do you the same favor?” And then she was gone, leaving Billie to stare in shock, her heart thumping madly in her breast. When she again dared to glance at Seth, she found him smiling and unruffled. He took a sip of his drink.
“What are you looking at, little gal? I can see you’re shocked by this little scene you just witnessed. You shouldn’t be. You knew there was no love lost between Amelia and me. Now that Jess is gone, so’s the pretense. We don’t even have to be nice to each other for her sake.
“Which reminds me, little gal, I can’t help wondering what Amelia’s limey was thinking about when he let himself get shot down. Problems at home? Responsibilities? Bad news? I’m warning you, if anything happens to my boy because you sent word of Jessica’s death, you’ll be the sorriest person alive. You’ll think what you just saw between my daughter and me was a family picnic. Understand? I don’t cotton to being crossed. I don’t care who it is. And you, little gal, would be nobody if anything happened to Moss.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Agnes, taking her cue from Seth, practically ignored Amelia’s presence, but Billie could see that her mother was impressed with the Nelson family title. “If your husband was a lord, doesn’t that make you a lady?” Agnes asked innocently.
“Ask my father, Mrs. Ames; he’ll tell you he doubts anything in this world could make me a lady.”
Agnes pretended not to hear her and looked at young Rand just as he dropped a forkful of peas onto his lap. “Really, Amelia, must that child eat at the table with us? He’s far too young to have proper manners.”
“When Maggie is three years old I intend to bring her to the table for informal family dinners,” Billie said. “Really, Mother, one would think we never lived in Philadelphia and ate at the kitchen table every night, except for Sundays if we had company. Would you really like to consign Rand to eating dinner every night with old sourpuss Jenkins?”
“Supper!” Seth corrected. “Here in Texas, dinner is served at noon and anytime you eat after that it’s supper.”
“Well, supper, then. Besides, the way people carry on here Rand is a welcome relief at the table.”
“None of my doing,” Seth protested. “Look here, gal, you’re not picking up that tone of voice from Amelia, are you? Moss wouldn’t like it. I can tell you that. My boy never liked an ox in a ditch.”
At Billie’s questioning glance, Amelia explained. “That’s Texan for trouble, Billie.”
Agnes fidgeted with her rope of pearls. She wished Amelia would go back to England, and quickly. She didn’t like having Seth so upset and ornery all the time. It made him difficult and, worse, suspicious of everyone and everything. She had to watch her attitude toward his daughter. To be too friendly and accepting would turn Seth against her, but to be too indifferent might arouse his family loyalty. She wished she knew when Billie was going to announce her pregnancy. What was she waiting for? Did she want to tell Moss first and wait for his response?
“Billie, dear,” asked Agnes, “could you give me Dr. Ward’s phone number? I thought I’d make an appointment with him.”
“It’s in the phone book beside the phone, Mother,” Billie answered, pushing food around on her plate. Instinctively, she knew it wasn’t the response Agnes wanted.
“Yes, of course, how silly of me.”
“Something wrong with you, Aggie?” Seth looked concerned.
“No, it’s nothing. I just thought I’d have a checkup. Have you seen Dr. Ward lately, Billie? Isn’t it time? Maggie is nearly six months old now and I know Dr. Ward takes a special interest in you.”
“’Specially since the Colemans built him that fancy new wing at the hospital,” Seth interjected.
“Yes, Seth, especially. Well, have you, Billie?” Agnes waited, watching her daughter, watching for the lie, praying for the truth.
“As a matter of fact, I have seen him. Everything is fine.”
Agnes’s hands nervously played with her pearls. Not a lie, but not the truth, either.
“Billie, I’m going into town tomorrow afternoon. Care to come with me?” Amelia stepped in. Agnes was like a vulture about to pick bones. The woman had taken Jessica’s place, running the house at Sunbridge as though it were her own, as thought it were her right.
“Yes, I’d like that. I haven’t been in since you came. We could go shopping. Will we take Rand with us?”
“No, not this time. I’ll leave him with Miss Jenkins.”
At the sound of the nurse’s name, Rand dropped his fork onto his plate and roared.
“That’s Rand’s interpretation of Miss Jenkins—a real dragon,” said Billie. “Right, Rand?”
“Sourpuss!” Rand said and laughed, tossing his bright blond head.
“You’ll stay with Miss Jenkins when Aunt Billie and I go into town, won’t you? That’s a good boy. Mum’ll bring you something nice.”
Rand nodded his head. “Maggie, too. Maggie cries. a lot, Mum. Bring Maggie a present.”
Amelia and Billie laughed, but Agnes shook her head in disapproval. “That’s hardly teaching the child proper manners. Sourpuss indeed! That’s quite disrespectful. You should be careful, Billie, that it doesn’t rub off on Maggie.”
“Oh, Rand gets on with Miss Jenkins well enough, Mrs. Ames: It’s just that he calls them the way he sees them. Even Pap would approve of that!” Amelia leaned over and kissed Rand’s cheek, her sleek dark hair in dramatic contrast with his towhead curls. “Drink your milk, Rand darling, then Aunt Billie and I will take you upstairs so we can decide what we’re going to do tomorrow and what kind of nice present we can bring for you and Maggie.”
Upstairs in Billie’s room, Amelia reclined on the chaise longue and sipped coffee from the cup she’d brought up. Rand was occupied in the nursery with Maggie. “I was serious about going into Austin tomorrow, Billie. I hope you will come with me.”
“Love to. They should be showing some of the new fall clothes now and I thought I’d like to shop for some wools. It’s been so long since I’ve sat at a sewing machine and I find I miss it. Your mother always told me I was welcome to use hers.”
“I’m not going in to shop, Billie,” Amelia said ominously. The gaze she directed at Billie was unflinchingly severe. “I’ve made contact with a few people I used to know and the arrangements have all been made for the abortion. We’ll have Carlos take us into Austin and from there we’ll use a taxi. My mind’s made up and I’m going through with it. It’s the only answer, for me and for Rand.”
“Amelia, surely there are other considerations, other solutions....”
“No, there are not! I received a cable from New York this afternoon. From a lawyer hired by Geoff’s brothers. They’re threatening legal action because I took Rand out of England.”
“But he’s your son! You have a right to take him anywhere you want!”
“Yes, he’s my son in my heart, but the adoption hadn’t gone through before Geoff was killed. I’m going to have a fight on my hands. I’d already contacted a lawyer in London. His best advice was to stay here at Sunbridge, or at least in Texas, for as long as I can. With the war in Europe and bad communication between here and there, it’s the only way to delay action. I can’t lose him, Billie, I just can’t! I love him so much. Every time I look at him I see Geoff. And I promised, I swore before God and Geoff that I would always be here for Rand and I won’t go back on that now.
“Geoff hadn’t had the happiest of childhoods, despite the advantages of wealth and title.” She laughed. “Geoff said I was Rand’s hope of growing up happy and normal. Me! Amelia ‘Never Does Anything Right’ Coleman Nelson, a young boy’s salvation. I�
�d sacrifice anything, Billie, to live up to the promise I made to Geoff. Please, help me.”
The soft light from the lamp cast half of Amelia’s face into shadow. Her shining cap of dark hair was sleekly molded to her head and knotted at the nape of her neck. The style lent her a severity that made her plea all the more poignant. Billie didn’t want to help. It was contradictory to all her beliefs, and yet she herself was being forced to face the issue.
“You’re backing off from me, Billie. I can see your principles are offended. Forget I asked. Forget I even told you anything about it. No hard feelings, just look after Rand while I’m gone tomorrow.”
“Where are you going? Who’s the doctor?”
Amelia’s laughter was almost a shriek. “Billie, surely you can’t be serious. Abortion is illegal, or did you forget? No doctor—no good doctor, anyway—would touch me. This is a connection I made through some not very respectable friends I used to have. Only clinical abortions, like the one Dr. Ward wants you to have, are performed in sterile hospitals.”
Visions darker than creeping black cats walked through Billie’s imagination. Stories of back alleys and butcher knives and knitting needles, stories whispered in the back of the girls’ gym at school. “Amelia! You can’t. It isn’t safe!”
“I can and I will. Just you watch me.” Her hand went to her middle, patting her stomach. “You know what’s in here, Billie? A dream. That’s all it is, a dream. But it’s not for me and I want to forget it before it becomes a nightmare. Do you know how frightened I am? I’m scared to death of letting Geoff down. I’ve never done anything right in my entire life except love Geoff and Rand. I’m really quite selfish, you know. Very selfish. Ask anyone who knows me. Ask my father.
“I must do this. I want to do this!”
“I’ll come with you,” said Billie. “You need someone. I don’t like it, I admit, but if you need me, I’m here. Moss wouldn’t have it any other way. I won’t sit in judgment of you, Amelia. I simply want to be your friend.”
“Oh, Billie!” Amelia cried, clasping Billie’s hands. “You are my friend. You’re more. You’re my sister!”
The next afternoon Billie and Amelia drove into Austin. They gave Carlos instructions to meet them at five o’clock in front of the Coleman Building, then waited until he pulled away before hailing a cab. Amelia sat stiff and silent in the backseat while Billie gave the address to the driver.
“You sure that’s the address, miss?” the driver said, chewing on a cigar stub. “You don’t look like the kind of ladies to go into that neighborhood.”
“That’s the address,” Billie answered, her tone barring further comment. Amelia sat beside her, staring straight ahead, her cold pale hands clutched in her lap.
When the taxi came to a halt, Billie looked doubtfully out at the sleazy honky-tonks and littered sidewalks. “This is the place,” Amelia said tonelessly. They paid the fare and stepped out.
“You want I should wait for you?”
“No, driver, thank you,” Billie said, glancing around nervously. Men loitered on street corners; loud music with a Mexican flavor blared from the Loco Saloon; ragged children and hollow-eyed women walked aimlessly down the street. “Amelia, are you sure you have the right address?”
“This is it,” she said, looking at a ramshackle doorway. “Let’s get this the hell over with. Come on.”
Billie had never been in such a place. The dark hallway smelled of burned garlic, mustiness, and garbage. Radios, each tuned to a different station, created a muffled cacophony. On the third floor, Amelia rapped sharply on a scarred door.
The door opened a crack and a pair of snapping dark eyes peered out suspiciously. When Amelia extended a crisp hundred-dollar bill, the door opened to admit them. A man in a dirty white shirt that strained across his vast belly called out in Spanish. A woman stepped into the room. Billie heard the locks being snapped behind her and knew a sense of panic.
“This is my friend,” Amelia was explaining. “She’s here to see I get home.”
The woman shook her head and grumbled something to the man. “You were to come alone,” he growled.
“No one said anything about coming alone. I need my friend with me.”
The woman began sputtering and the man shouted at her. “You have all the money?” he said to Amelia. “Two hundred dollars?”
“Yes. My friend will give you the other hundred when everything is over.”
“Your friend will wait here.”
“No. She comes with me. Or I go somewhere else.”
Again the woman began chattering. “Silencio!” the man raged. Billie was feeling weak-kneed and her hands were icy, despite the warm day.
“Okay. Go in there with Maria. She take care of everything. First I see the money.”
“Show him the money,” Amelia instructed. “Dammit, Billie, do what I say! Show him the money!”
Billie fumbled with her purse, extracting the bill and showing it to the man, who appeared satisfied. She replaced it in the zippered compartment quickly, as though it were burning her fingers.
Maria stepped aside to allow them into the adjoining room. It was empty except for a kitchen table and a single chair. Just beyond, Billie could see a filthy toilet. Newspapers covered the long windows that faced the back of the building. Voices shouted at one another from the other side of the wall. Maria was wearing an apron made of oilcloth. It was the same pattern that had once covered the Ameses’ kitchen table in Philadelphia. A jumble of impressions penetrated her awareness like short punches to the brain.
She could feel Amelia’s cold trembling hand in her own as she stood beside the table on which Amelia was lying, legs spread, teeth biting into her lips to keep from crying out. Maria was working between her legs. The pattern of her oilcloth apron swam before Billie’s eyes, making her stomach heave. Suddenly there was the smell of blood and the sound of something dropping and spattering into the chipped enamel dishpan on the floor near Maria’s feet. Billie’s eyes reluctantly lowered to the floor. Dark red clots of blood and tissue swam in the pan. It was done. The small nebulous life Amelia had carried had been scraped and torn from her womb.
The cracked and filthy floor threatened to rise up and engulf Billie. It had been so quick, so callously done. She felt as though her own insides had been ripped. There was a burning at her center, demanding she turn her focus inward. The small life that clung there could not survive without her. It could be torn from its haven and discarded just as easily as the contents of Maria’s dishpan. That it would occur in a sterile operating room and she would be anesthetized made no difference. She was a mother and it was her child, and without her it would never breathe or cry or be hungry.
Billie had come to her decision. Her unborn child’s life would depend on God, not the surgeon’s knife.
Amelia’s hands gripped hers, her teeth were chattering, and tears rivered down her cheeks. “Billie! Billie! God, what have I done!”
Later that night, after Billie had visited to the nursery to kiss Maggie good night, she stopped by Amelia’s room.
“Amelia?” Billie whispered into the darkened room. “Are you sleeping?” She moved quietly across the carpet to the bed, careful not to disturb Rand, who was asleep in the little trundle bed on the far side of the room. “Amelia!”
“Billie. Billie, I’m so sick.”
She touched Amelia’s forehead. “You’re burning up!”
“And I’m bleeding. Badly.”
Billie clicked on the bedside lamp. Amelia was pale and white-lipped. “I’m calling Dr. Ward—”
“Billie, no! You can’t....”
“What will we do? You’re sick!”
“It’ll pass, I promise, it’ll pass.”
“No. No, it won’t. Something went wrong this afternoon.” She lifted the bedcovers and pulled at Amelia’s nightgown. A spreading red stain darkened the pink cotton. “You are bleeding, worse than you probably know. I’m calling the doctor....”
Ameli
a’s hand gripped her wrist. “You can’t You can’t! I can’t let anyone know. I can’t take that chance! I’ve got Rand to think of.... Geoff’s family would use this against me if they knew. And Pap is just mean enough to tell them if he thought it would hurt me.”
“Seth’s a mean old codger, but he’d never...”
“Look at me, Billie. Look at me and never say never. No, you can’t, and I can’t let you call Dr. Ward.”
“All right, then, let me call someone else. Anyone. What if I drove you into Austin myself? You could go to the emergency room. No one would have to know.”
Amelia’s head sank into her pillow, rocking back and forth in denial.
“Amelia, you said you have Rand to think of. You could die from loss of blood, from infection. Think of Rand!”
“All right. You take me into the hospital. Not Memorial.
Clinton General, on the other side of town.”
Billie struggled with the Coleman family Packard through the dead of night. The ribbon of highway stretched out before the headlights like a long, narrow tongue. Amelia sat beside her, head thrown back against the seat, beads of perspiration glistening on her brow. The clock on the dash read twelve-thirty. As far as she knew, no one realized they’d left the house. But in the morning there would be explanations to be made, lies to be told, guilt to be hidden. She wouldn’t think about that now. She had to keep her mind on the driving. This limousine was too long, too wide, and she was having difficulty judging distances. Her eyes kept going to the odometer. Twenty miles, thirty, thirty-five. Nearly an hour had passed. Amelia was quiet now, too quiet and too pale.
The lights of the city glimmered before her and traffic increased. The main avenue leading to the hospital was blocked by street lights, all of them red. “Hold on, Amelia, just a few more minutes,” she promised, praying fervently all the while.
Things happened quickly when she pulled up to the emergency entrance of Clinton General. Amelia was placed on a stretcher and wheeled away. Then a nurse in a crisply starched uniform came to interview Billie.
Texas Rich Page 31
