by Gwen Florio
She locked the doors, pinned the drapes closed, unplugged the landline, shut down her phone and computer, and barely resisted the idea of drugging the dog so that he wouldn’t drive them crazy with his barking every time another reporter knocked at the door.
Other approaches weren’t as easy to ignore.
Dear Penelope, read a note that arrived on engraved stationery with a pleasurably tactile high rag content.
Under the circumstances, we think it best that you not attend the Beautification Society meeting this month until this unfortunate situation has been resolved. We know you understand. Best wishes to you in this difficult time. Regards.
Best wishes. Regards.
Penelope received a half-dozen such notes in the following days. The Neighborhood Association. The Soroptimists. The Hospital Committee. And – probably the one that truly stung – the Founders’ Ball Committee.
She and Nora moved around the darkened house, existing within a subdued formality, their platitudes belying the betrayal smoldering in Penelope’s eyes.
‘If only you’d left …’ she began once.
‘Well, I didn’t.’ Nora didn’t add the obvious. Where would she have gone? At some point, she’d have to talk to Penelope about Quail House. Her misty imaginings of settling into some sort of leisurely early retirement, sheltered in the place where she’d grown up – a life of limitations, yes, but also one blissfully free of risk, dissolved in the harsh light of reality.
Her mother had managed to overcome a scandal and return to Chateau with her head held high, but Nora knew she didn’t have that sort of intestinal fortitude. Anyway, having a baby out of wedlock was one thing. The shame was personal, and people could congratulate themselves on their own magnanimity for overlooking it. But exposing one of their own to the world as a racist killer? Nora had brought shame upon the entire town – the white residents, anyway – and that was unacceptable.
She could call Emerson, have him negate the agreement leaving Quail House to her in trust. But then what? Penelope would never consent to sell the place. Wait until her mother died, and then sell it herself? But then she’d have to return to Chateau to deal with the paperwork. In the meantime – circling back to the original issue – where would she go?
She distracted herself by retreating to her grandfather’s office, intent upon reordering the ankle-deep litter of files she’d left strewn across the floor in her futile search for information about her sibling, a task she hoped would require just enough concentration to quiet the bubbling stew of doubt and guilt.
It worked; if not entirely erasing her emotions, at least quieting them to a simmer. The file drawers, standing open and empty, began to fill. The floor reappeared. She granted herself a lunch break, returning to the office with a ham sandwich and a glass of milk, paging idly through one of the remaining files, labeled Business Checking Account, as she ate.
She’d scrutinized its pages and pages of statements with more care than some of the other documents. If she’d learned nothing in her years of public relations, finances tripped people up more than anything else, even illicit affairs or public misbehavior.
She ate listlessly, despite her hunger. The air, even indoors, hung thick and heavy. Sunlight poured a gap in the drapes. It had a glazed quality, portending a change in the weather. As far as she was concerned, the sooner the better.
She spread the bank statements across the desk, their rows of names and numbers almost soothing, looking again for something out of the ordinary, different from the payments for power, telephone and insurance, the quarterly property tax bill. A five-hundred-dollar monthly payment to Advance Bank, whatever that was. All the family accounts were at the First National Bank of Chateau. She’d noted it before and figured – well, she couldn’t remember what she’d thought in her haste that day. She took another bite and glared at the pages and, for lack of anything else to do, tapped Advance Bank into her phone.
Advance had a Baltimore address. Five hundred dollars was a considerable sum back in – she checked the date – 1963. A mortgage payment? Perhaps her father had invested in property in Baltimore. Smythe’s Best Backfin was trucked to restaurants throughout the city. Maybe her grandfather had thought to open a satellite plant in the Inner Harbor, an industrial area that, decades later, after the factories closed, would rise phoenix-like as a tourism mecca of museums, restaurants and condos with shocking price tags in the old warehouses.
She sat her half-eaten sandwich on its plate and went to one of the cabinets, retrieving some of the files she’d just replaced, turning in time to see the dog and cat edging toward the remains of her sandwich, the cat atop the table, the dog on a chair.
She threw the statements at them, sending papers, cat, dog and sandwich remnants flying.
‘That was my lunch!’
Even as she spoke, Murph and Mooch came slinking back, side-eying her as they vied for bits of meat and crust.
‘You’ll be sorry when you don’t get dinner tonight.’
She turned her attention back to the bank statements, trying to assemble them in some sort of order. But no matter what year she held in her hand – 1967, when the monthly amount tripled, all the way to 1985, when they abruptly ended – the deposits to Advance were there.
She fetched her laptop and opened her browser, searching property records in Baltimore. Nothing for a Smythe’s Best Backfin, or William Smythe or Penelope Smythe. She clicked on Advance Bank’s website, thinking to find a phone number and call them, ask for information, knowing even as she did that no reputable bank would tell her anything.
She clicked away from the bank’s page, scrolling through sites that mentioned Advance, until a bit of information caught her eye.
Advance Bank, one of Baltimore’s oldest black-owned banks …
‘What the …?’
Her thoughts ping-ponged among the possibilities, returning relentlessly to one.
She slammed the laptop shut and swept the papers from the table, sending Mooch and Murph scrambling anew to avoid the cascade.
She found her phone and brought up Grace’s number.
She was beginning to figure out what had happened to her brother.
FIFTY
Grace clicked out of the call, laid the phone down and sat open-mouthed.
Kwame looked at the phone, and then at her. ‘You OK?’
She nodded, afraid to speak. Who knew what might come out?
‘Who was that?’
She freed a hand and reached for her lemonade. She’d made it the way he liked it, just enough sugar to keep your mouth from puckering, and tangy with crushed mint. It steadied her.
‘That was Nora Best.’
His face clouded. ‘What’s she want now?’
‘Says she wants to see me.’
Kwame brought his fist down on the table. Lemonade sloshed from their glasses. ‘What for? To try and sell you on that crazy story about a fox finding the phone?’ Brenda Holiday had filled them in just before the AG’s office, trying to forestall an avalanche of public records requests, released the video to the media.
It went viral within moments, somehow more chilling because of Robert’s disembodied voice, verging from irritable calm to terror, and its final kaleidoscope of earth and sky and the single piercing sound of the shot.
It had taken the combined strength of Kwame and Grace to hold Dorothy as she screamed and sobbed anew upon hearing her son’s final moments, to keep her from tearing at her clothing, her hair, her face. Only later would they hold each other, weeping quietly together after the departure of Grace’s longtime doctor, hastily summoned to administer Dorothy a sedative.
‘She didn’t say. Just said it was urgent and that she had to see me in person.’
‘Then why doesn’t she get her ass over here instead of making you haul all the way out there?’
After Holiday’s call, Grace had wondered if she’d ever smile again. Now she found out she could, although this was a new, foreign sort of smile, coldl
y satisfied.
‘Probably because the last time she was here, I threw her off my damn porch.’
‘Good for you. You’re not going, are you?’
Grace considered the various reasons Nora might now demand her presence. One rose to the surface.
‘You know, I just might.’
‘No.’
She gave him The Look, the one she’d used on him his whole life whenever he’d dared to cross her.
His shoulders sagged. ‘All right, then. But if you go, I’m coming with you.’
She started to object, then thought better of it. She’d sheltered him his whole life, and what good had it done?
A breeze stirred the kitchen curtains, not the hot breath of the past weeks, but cool, nearly as refreshing as the lemonade.
Grace lifted her head and breathed deep. ‘If we’re going, we’d better go now. Storm’s coming.’
At first, Nora thought the Subaru in the driveway might be delivering another reporter. It pulled up next to Electra, returned just that morning from the body shop, restored to her gleaming glory.
Nora backed away from the window beside the door, hoping the car’s occupants hadn’t already glimpsed her. Then Kwame emerged and held the passenger door open for Grace.
In all the years Grace had worked at Quail House, she’d always arrived by foot. Until this moment, Nora had never considered the three-mile walk – each way – that entailed. Decades after the fact, she was finally beginning to understand the contempt that lurked just behind Grace’s bland gaze.
She’d installed her mother at the kitchen table, with her usual hot tea, and glasses of iced tea for herself and Grace. Now she hurried to pour another for Kwame, falling back on propriety on this most infelicitous of occasions.
‘What’s this about?’
‘Yes, Nora. We’re all so curious.’
Nora wasn’t sure whose voice held more frost, Grace’s or Penelope’s.
‘Sit down. Please. This won’t take long.’
Kwame looked at Grace. She nodded, once, permission reluctantly dispensed. They both sat, Grace glaring at Nora and Penelope in turn. Penelope stared down at the table; Kwame, at the stack of files in front of Nora.
She caught his gaze and nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. She opened one of the files and withdrew a piece of paper, dense with printed numbers, and spoke first to Penelope.
‘Mother, when I realized you must have had another child, I started looking for evidence. I never found it, but you were good enough to finally tell me yourself – at least, once I asked you directly.’
The color drained from Penelope’s face. She gripped the table as though afraid if she let go, she’d slide straight to the floor.
‘But you wouldn’t tell me where he was. I think I have an idea, though. Or, at least, I think maybe Grace knows.’
An odd half-smile crossed Grace’s face. ‘Let’s hear it.’
‘This didn’t jump out at me the first time I looked. Maybe I’d just seen too many documents that day. But I came across it again and saw all these payments to Advance Bank. In Baltimore.’
Penelope’s head jerked. ‘What are you talking about? I never sent any money to a bank in Baltimore.’
‘Granddaddy did, starting not long after you went away to New England. Five hundred dollars a month for the first few years. Then fifteen hundred, coming out of the business account. When you sold the processing plant, it was this far’ – she held her thumb and forefinger a millimeter apart – ‘from bankruptcy. But he supported that child, didn’t he, Miss Grace?’
Grace nodded slowly. ‘Yes, he did.’
Penelope made a strangled sound.
‘The money went to you.’
Grace nodded again. ‘Yes, it did.’
‘For his care.’
‘Yes.’
Wind gusted through the screened window, so hard it toppled a vase on the counter.
Nora and Kwame jumped. The dog yelped. The cat darted beneath the sideboard.
Grace and Penelope sat still as death.
‘You know where he is.’
‘Yes.’
Nora spoke in a rush, eager for the information she so longed to discover. ‘You were the go-between, right? Granddaddy sent you the money, and you gave it to the family who took care of him.’
Grace sat serene as a saint. Penelope’s face went from gray to white.
Nora hurried on.
‘Granddaddy supported him until he was twenty-one. So you knew where he was right into adulthood. Do you know where he is now?’
Grace dipped her head.
‘Could you help me find him? Do you think he’d mind?’ She turned to her mother, giddy with her own daring. ‘I’m sorry, Mother. I know this is probably painful to you. But all these secrets, all these years. The hell with them. Let’s wipe the slate clean, start again. Who cares what people in Chateau think?’
It took her a moment to recognize the sound Grace made as a chuckle.
‘Could you contact him, ask if he’d like to meet us?’
Clouds swept in, black and heavy, defeating the sun that had held triumphant sway for so many weeks. They sat in near darkness, the silence in the room absolute. The wind, as though respecting the gravity of the moment, stopped abruptly. The curtains sighed back into place.
Even in the dim light, Nora saw the long look that passed between her mother and Grace.
‘No,’ said Grace. ‘I won’t ask him. But maybe your mother would.’
Nora’s and Kwame’s heads swiveled in unison toward Penelope, then toward each other. Kwame shrugged, signaling his bewilderment.
Nora voiced her own. ‘But she doesn’t know where he is.’
Lightning ran across the sky, the flash illuminating the moisture on Penelope’s face. She held out her hands, imploring. ‘Grace, please.’
Grace looked as though she had plenty to say in response, practically vibrating with the effort of holding it back. Still, she maintained her silence.
‘Please, please, don’t do this.’ Openly weeping now.
Thunder cracked, underscoring Grace’s command. ‘Tell her.’
The hand Penelope lifted danced with nerves. She tucked three fingers against her palm, folding her thumb across it. She grasped her wrist with her other hand, steadying it so her index finger finally stilled in an implacable point. ‘I–I …’ She sobbed too hard for speech.
Grace helped her out.
‘Nora Best, meet your brother. Kwame, meet your mother.’
FIFTY-ONE
Grace figured Nora hoped for some kind of big kumbaya moment – Kwame wrapping Penelope in a hug, crying, ‘Mama, mama!’
And then turning to Nora, opening his arms wide. ‘Lil Sis!’
Guess what didn’t happen?
She almost felt bad. Because it was one thing letting it go all this time without confronting Penelope. But she wanted to protect Kwame. Far as she was concerned, he could have lived the rest of his life thinking Bobby was his big brother, not his father. Although there was a special sort of satisfaction in having Penelope’s daughter figure it out – even if she got the father part wrong.
But Kwame’s face. All this time he’d believed her mother – her gentle, brokenhearted mother, who thought he walked on water and would have done anything for him, even though she was too old to be the fun kind of mother most kids wanted – was his own.
Now he just sat there and stared at this shriveled-up old white lady, crying and shaking and unable to get herself under control enough to blubber anything but, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’
‘Grace?’ he said, his voice as high and uncertain as a child’s.
She battled the temptation to go easy, soften the blow. Even though there was no way to pretty-up such news. Case in point: Nora and her mother, looking like the damn world had come to an end. Even though, given Quail House’s age, it probably wasn’t the first time those walls had seen a black child from a white parent.
‘Grace?’ This time
it was Nora. When Grace didn’t answer, Nora turned to Kwame, each of them registering the other’s green eyes, the same gaze they’d seen in the mirror over the years, something passing between them – not the sort of thing that led to hugs and tears – but a wary acknowledgment and, much stronger, curiosity.
Grace interrupted the moment.
‘Here’s all you need to know about your new big brother. Someone killed his daddy. And your daddy’ – she shot a look across the table at the weeping Penelope – ‘covered it up. Best I can figure, he found the gun that killed him and threw it so far away nobody’ll ever see it again. Now his son’s been shot dead and’ – she swung back toward Nora – ‘you helped cover that up. So you’ll have to excuse him if he’s not jumping into the arms of his new-found family. Because if it hadn’t been for you people, he’d still have his own family. My mother was all the mother he ever needed. She wanted him. Not like this one, who threw him away like trash and danced through the rest of her life like none of it had ever happened. Well? Well?’
Penelope’s mouth opened and closed like that of a fish suddenly finding itself on dry land, unable to dart and twist away. Tears cut tracks through the layer of powder on her face.
‘Oh, Grace,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve ruined us all.’
For just a moment there, Grace almost felt sorry for her. But she saw the word ‘ruined’ land like a slap across Kwame’s face.
‘You can thank your daughter for that. If she hadn’t figured it out, you’d still be getting away with everything, the way you have your whole life. But she looked at the money.’
Nora had been staring at Kwame as if she wanted to memorize every line and mole on his face. Her eyes never left it as she spoke, almost absently. ‘Yes. That’s right. The money.’
Kwame’s lips barely moved. ‘The money?’
If the unthinkable had been possible all those years ago, if Nora and Kwame had grown up together like the brother and sister they were, would they have echoed each other’s words like this?
‘The five hundred dollars each month,’ Nora said. ‘Fifteen hundred after a few years.’
