Blue Lake

by Elizabeth Buhmann

  Mary said equably, “I think he’s comfortable.”

  Regina stole a glance at Alice, who appeared oblivious. No one reached for a dish until Mary had served Alice and offered the dish to Frank, who said, “Help yourself, Mary.”

  Alice sat with her usual dainty indifference, her back so straight it never touched the chair.

  It was Bebe who set the tone. “I almost feel like he’s here right now, don’t you? Like the old days.”

  Frank picked up the cue. “We had many a good time in this house.”

  “How old is this house?” Fran wanted to know. “Must be a hundred years old.”

  Regina surprised herself by jumping in with the answer. “Not half that old. It was built in 1920. There’s a stone with the date.”

  Alice spoke. “William built the house.” They all looked at her, and she added, “We were married in February of 1920 at Grace Church. Forty-eight years ago.”

  “That’s a beautiful church,” said Fran.

  Regina thought back to Grace Church, where she had gone with Mary once or twice when growing up. Beautiful old pews, brick, boxwood.

  “I grew up in the Rectory at Grace Church,” Alice said.

  “How nice. You were married at home then.”

  “We were married in Grace Church. The reception was held at my grandfather’s house. His name was Walter Pace.”

  “You’re named for him!” Fran exclaimed, nudging her husband.

  Alice said, “My mother’s maiden name was Pace.”

  Pace leaned toward her. “He had a plantation on the James River.”

  “Belongs to a Japanese businessman now, I believe,” Frank put in. “Grandmother Wilcox used to tell me that Alice Wilcox’s wedding was the event of the year. Two hundred guests from four different counties and three states, wedding presents piled to the ceiling, each finer than the next.”

  “Not least of which,” said Edith, “was the deed to Blue Lake and a hundred acres.”

  “Who gave them that?” Fran asked.

  Alice answered. “This property belonged to my grandfather Pace. My mother’s father. But he didn’t give it to William.” She touched Edith’s wrist as she corrected her daughter. “William paid for it. William was already a very successful man. He came from a fine old family, but he was very proud of being self-made.”

  Everyone waited in respectful silence for Alice to continue. Regina saw Fran open her mouth to speak, glance around, and hold her tongue.

  Alice selected the silver butter knife and spread one small bite’s worth of bread. “William had seen the hundred acres and the creek and wanted to build here.” She set the knife across her butter plate. “He persuaded me to come and live here.” She set the bread on the edge of her plate, untouched, and looked unseeing through the lace curtains. “I didn’t want to.” Her fingers alone showed agitation, hovering over the buttered bread.

  Fran asked, “Why not?”

  After a silence too long for comfort, Alice answered, “The lake has always been dangerous.”

  Frank cleared his throat softly and steered the conversation past the moment. “Papa completely changed it. It was just a swimming hole at a deep spot in a creek called Swift Creek because the current was so strong. Papa built the dam first thing.”

  Alice picked up her fork, studied a small helping of sweet potato, and finally, with great delicacy, ate.

  Frank moved onto familiar ground, describing how William Hannon had hired a man to build the house from a plan he’d drawn up himself, based on a house he saw in Italy. When he brought Alice to the house after the wedding, only enough trees had been cleared to allow a view of the lake from the upstairs balcony outside the master bedroom. In the years that followed, six more acres were cleared. Wide steps led down from the veranda to an allee lined with cherry trees that bloomed like great pink clouds in the spring.

  Bebe chimed in about how everyone said that Alice was the most beautiful woman they had ever seen. “Every man who ever saw her fell in love with her.” This she directed to Fran, who murmured her amazement, while Alice nibbled at her pork loin as if she hadn’t heard.

  A comfortable few moments followed. Serving dishes were passed for seconds, and Frank offered to slice more pork. A late flash of sunlight filtered through the lace, sparkling on silver and crystal.

  “What a beautiful room this is,” Fran exclaimed, looking all around.

  Even with the curtains pulled, the room was full of light. Regina could barely resist the temptation to fling the lace wide to see the room as it had once been. A breeze moved the lace panels.

  Pace sat back and stretched his shoulders. “You can keep the windows open and the bugs don’t even come in.”

  “A bird flew in once.” Frank laughed. “Papa chased it out with a feather duster.”

  Fran ran her fingers along the smooth mahogany table. “Seats eight with so much room to spare.”

  “Oh, it seats more than that,” Pace said. “There are two leaves. You pull the table out in two places and drop in a two-foot extension. So it seats twelve. Fourteen if you squeeze a little.”

  “Like on Thanksgiving and Christmas, I suppose,” Fran agreed. “All the grandchildren at once.”

  “Oh no,” Pace told her. “The children always ate at a children’s table in the kitchen, or on the back porch if the weather was good.”

  Regina could remember being relegated to just such a table in the summer, on the veranda, when the whole family came to visit. “I hated that.”

  “Oh, we thought it was fun,” Frank said. “Our own little party, and we didn’t have to watch our table manners like we would in front of the grown-ups.”

  Regina was remembering a different, much later time. Even Edith chimed in about the famous dinner parties, the good times when she and Frank and Pace and Mary played on the back porch while their parents and the guests drank wine and danced on the terrace with the moon reflecting on the lake. Regina had heard so many times and with such color about the glory years that she almost felt as though she’d been there herself, watching a royal pageant from behind velvet ropes.

  “Such a big house too,” Fran marveled. “I can’t imagine what it took to keep such a household going in those days. You had plenty of help, I guess.”

  Pace nudged away his empty plate. “In those days, there were nurses for us and cooks, waiters, and waitresses.”

  Frank agreed. “Papa hired a house maid, a cook, a nurse, a part-time tutor, and then he had a list of people he would call in when they entertained, which they did often. He built the dock and bought a boat, a sort of pleasure barge that could seat as many as a dozen people.”

  Mary unobtrusively cleared plates. When Fran half-rose to help, Mary touched her shoulder and murmured, “No, no, I’m just moving these out of the way.”

  Frank expanded on his narrative. “He loved a fine garden too, Papa did.”

  Regina thought Frank was speaking as though William were already gone, and she stole a glance at Alice, who seemed unconcerned.

  Frank continued. “He installed a greenhouse and cold frames, planted a knot garden and a box bush maze.” Frank ticked off the additions on his fingers. “An herb garden, a walled rose garden, and a large enough kitchen garden to feed the whole family.”

  Fran laughed and shook her head, clearly impressed. “Well, now, he must have hired an army for all that.”

  “He did. He had a full-time gardener, and the gardener hired a six-man crew.”

  Fran shook her head in wonder. “When was this?”

  “The nineteen-twenties.”

  “Oh! This was thirty, forty years ago.”

  “I was only how old?” Pace consulted his siblings. “Mary, you were born in 1920, then Frank, Edith, and me all in the space of six years. So we’re talking about when we were little children.”

  Regina had heard all her life about the golden idyll, the grand times when William was the patriarch and Alice was the great beauty, perfect wife, hostess, young mo
ther. She offered what to her was the most enticing part. “There were horses too. Papa had a hunter named Blackjack, and Mama used to ride a mare named Kitty Bee.”

  “You couldn’t possibly remember that,” Bebe objected.

  “I didn’t say I remembered.”

  “You weren’t around then.” She turned away with an air of don’t you try to horn in on this.

  Regina was at last provoked into retaliating. “Neither were you!” The sharpness of her tone broke the spell, but Regina was too angry to stop. “You weren’t born until 1929.”

  A static pause.

  Then Alice sighed. “It all ended then.”

  Fran looked at Pace, mystified, until Frank said resignedly, “The whole country fell into ruin.”

  Alice touched her napkin to her lips. “It was never the same after that.”

  Fran said, “Oh, are you talking about the stock market crash?”

  Frank nodded. Mary set out a stack of small plates from the sideboard. Regina jumped up and brought the cake that had been covered with a glass bell.

  Frank resumed his story in a somber tone. “The crash hit Papa pretty hard, but he owned all his property outright and had no debts. He let all his staff go, except those who agreed to barter service for food and shelter.”

  Pace said, “But we did all right. The gardener stayed on in the cottage and planted vegetables all year instead of flowers.”

  “You mean Mary’s cottage?” Regina asked. She remembered hearing it called the gardener’s cottage.

  Pace nodded. “The gardener never did pay rent, but in the old days, he had a salary. After the crash, he stayed on for a share of the produce.”

  Mary brought coffee from the kitchen, and Frank grinned. “Blackjack learned to pull a plow. And Kitty Bee had to share her pasture with two goats and a cow.”

  The mood at the table was back on an even keel. Regina relaxed and tasted the cake, homemade and yellow, with a dark chocolate icing. Regina’s mind wandered to the memory of Al’s hand on her wrist.

  Edith said quietly to Fran, “Sam Rawley.”

  Then the light in the room seemed to shift.

  Frank said, “He was an old curmudgeon, but he was a magician with the roses. Once—”

  “He lived in the cottage until William put him out,” Alice broke in.

  Mary and Frank exchanged a glance.

  Pace shifted in his chair. “He’s gone, Alice.”

  Alice was not reassured. “He’s still around here somewhere.”

  Regina felt a rise in tension, but Mary remained calm. “He can’t go anywhere much anymore, Mama. He’s very old.”

  “He began to drink,” Alice said. “Whiskey.”

  Regina glanced around the table.

  Alice continued. “He tried to shoe Kitty Bee, and she kicked him in the face.”

  Fran laughed but fell silent when no one joined her.

  “I told William to get rid of him. He frightened the children. He had these broken old teeth and his jaw must have been broken. It never was right afterward.”

  Regina was shocked into alertness. “Oh! I knew there was a gardener, but I never knew him. Is he that mean old man on the Shackley Road?”

  This was met with silence.

  She continued uncertainly. “I ran into him once, a long time ago. He was very angry. He said—” She broke off with the realization that she was on dangerous ground. She shouldn’t mention anything connected with the nanny who had hanged herself. She thought about what else the angry old man had said, the nonsense. She tried for humor, for the amused, offhanded tone Frank so often took. “Something about Tiberius of all things. He acted crazy. He said, ‘Tiberius ain’t done nothin’!’ Remember, Mary? I told you about that.”

  Regina was smiling, thinking for a moment that she could tell a story too, but Mary’s eyes were locked on Alice, who had stiffened.

  Alice rose shakily, her silverware clattering on her plate. “If you all will excuse me, I believe I’ve had as much as I want.” A knife fell to the floor.

  Frank half-rose. Alice left the room, and Mary followed. Regina watched, mouth open, then looked around the table. Frank looked thoughtful, his brows pulled together. Edith looked at her lap, expressionless. Pace squirmed and glanced at Fran, who was openly baffled.

  When Mary and Alice were safely out of earshot, Fran was the first to speak, in a low voice, leaning forward. “Did we say something?”

  Bebe answered, glaring at Regina. “Sam Rawley was very bitter when Papa turned him out of the cottage.” She turned to Fran. “You know we had a sister who drowned. Some of us thought Rawley’s son Tiberius had murdered her.”

  13

  The First Tragedy

  “I had no idea,” Regina cried at the same time that Fran exclaimed, “Murdered her?”

  Bebe spoke over both of them. “That was a horrible thing to bring up, Ree. You don’t know what an awful time that was or you wouldn’t even mention it.”

  Regina caught her breath. Had she brought it up? What she had said? Though they were seated all around the dining room table, Regina saw the others as lined up against her. Frank said something in a low voice to Edith, and Fran turned to Pace.

  Bebe blistered on, her face screwed up in outrage. “It was a hideous time, and you have no idea how devastated she was. Why would you dredge up the horrible idea that Eugenie was murdered?”

  Regina’s cheeks burned and her eyes stung.

  “And at a time like this? Our father”—and Regina understood full well that Bebe did not include her in the “our”—“is on his deathbed, and you’re reminding her about that terrible time. Why would you do that?”

  Regina spat back with a surge of anger, “I didn’t.”

  Mary returned in the midst of a shocked silence.

  Regina dropped her tone, but her heart was pounding. “I didn’t bring it up, I stumbled over it. But it’s true? The police did investigate it as a murder at the time?” The speech left her breathless.

  Mary moved behind Regina’s chair and laid her hands on Regina’s shoulders. “I know you heard that, Regina. But they couldn’t prove anything, and the idea is too horrible to think about. Don’t let it upset you.”

  “I’m not upset!” She almost laughed. She was, in fact, wild and near tears. She twisted in her chair to face Mary and plunged forward recklessly. “They couldn’t prove anything, but what if it’s true? She blames herself. But if someone murdered Eugenie, then that’s where the blame belongs.”

  This was met with silence. Mary folded her hands in front of her waist.

  After a moment, Edith, ever calm, took a sip of water and said, “She believes it anyway, whether you bring it up or not. She’s not the only one who thought that at the time.”

  “She would still blame herself anyway,” Frank interposed gently. “For not protecting her child. For not being there to prevent the harm. A parent always does.”

  “But why?” Fran was nearly whispering. “Why did they think somebody had done something?” She shrank a little, as if not wanting to ask but unable to resist.

  Regina, her voice unsteady but in too deep to quit, asked, “Wasn’t someone killing children?”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake!” Bebe slapped her napkin on the table in disgust.

  Fran looked perplexed. “When did this happen exactly?”

  Pace said, “1945.”

  “How old was she?”

  “Five.”

  “So she was much younger than all of you too.”

  “We were all grown,” Pace said. “I was in college. I guess I was twenty.”

  “She was actually close to your age,” Fran said to Regina.

  Mary returned to her place at the table and sat. “Ree was three at the time.” With a glance at Bebe, but with no reproach in her tone, she added, “She can’t remember anything about what it was like.”

  “I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like to lose a child,” Fran said.

  “The death of
a sibling is hard too,” Pace added, and Edith nodded.

  Regina thought for a moment that they were sympathizing with her, which would have been a revolutionary first. It had only occurred to her for the first time that afternoon that the loss of her one close sibling had been devastating.

  Fran said, “I’m sure it was hard for all of you.”

  Frank shook his head. “It was hard for all of us, but we were mostly grown, even Bebe. When you’re young, it’s harder, especially if you feel responsible.”

  Regina registered a physical jolt. “Responsible?” She had never dreamed she could be responsible for Eugenie’s death! How?

  Fran said, “What?”

  Edith explained. “Alice had a sister who died when she was young.”

  “Oh, you’re kidding!”

  Regina felt as though a breaking wave pushed her back in her chair. No one, even Frank, had given her the slightest thought! They were not talking about it being difficult for her when Eugenie died. They were talking about poor Alice again! Fran was exclaiming and all the others were shaking their heads over Alice’s tragedy-ridden lot. Regina felt she had reached an all-new level of exasperation. She listened now with a low burn of anger in her chest.

  “She lost a sister as a child,” Frank said. “And she was deeply traumatized by it.”

  “I didn’t know about that,” Fran said.

  “I never knew that much about it myself,” Pace admitted. “Grandmother Wilcox would mention it sometimes, but not in front of Alice. Grandfather Wilcox wouldn’t talk about it at all.”

  “It was the Wilcox’s younger daughter,” Frank added by way of explanation.

  Edith chimed in. “So you see, it was bad enough to lose a child, but it reminded her of losing her sister.”

  Regina had built up enough resentment to blurt, “I lost a sister when I was a child too, and yes, it’s very hard.”

  “You were so very young though,” Edith said. “You couldn’t understand.”

  “This is not about you,” Bebe added. And not quite able to let it go at that, she muttered something Regina couldn’t quite catch—about Regina feeling sorry for herself?