A Certain Age

by Beatriz Williams

  “But what happened?” she whispered to Virginia, too numb for anger. Too numb even to care, at this moment, that her sister had been part of this deception. “Did Father really kill her?”

  Virginia didn’t know. Virginia never asked. At first, she was too young to ask such a thing, of such a father. After that, she was too afraid of the answer. What would she do if he said yes? He was their father, for heaven’s sake.

  Sophie had pondered on the enormity of Virginia’s burden, how Virginia had taken the weight entirely on her own shoulders, and never asked Sophie to share it with her. She pondered a lot of things, actually, during that dead month between Father’s arrest and the official indictment for the crime of capital murder, by a grand jury in Stamford, Connecticut, and all of those things troubled her.

  Most of all, she was troubled by this: she, Sophie, is the only one who knows what really happened.

  Well, not exactly. Not her, not the Sophie who presently exists. But this theoretical child-Sophie, this tiny person who once was Sophie, she knows who murdered her mother. Sophie’s sure of it. She saw what happened, she ran to her mother when the killer left, and that’s where Mrs. Lumley found her.

  Sophie knows what happened, somewhere inside the folds of her brain.

  And—of course—the killer knows.

  AT THE MOMENT SHE KNOCKS on Virginia’s door, however, Sophie isn’t troubled by the elusive contents of her memory. She’s trying to fight down the panic choking her throat. The rapid stroke of her heartbeat against the skin of her neck. The sweat prickling the pores of her arms and her brow, warning her of danger, danger.

  She can’t explain why. A moment ago, waiting for the elevator, she was just fine. Calm and collected. Maybe a little anxious on the inside, because Father has absconded from jail, because he might have come here to find her and Virginia, and Virgo hasn’t answered her telephone, though she has ordered breakfast.

  But that’s no reason to feel as if she can’t breathe, as if the world around her is shivering on the brink of explosion. Cold and hot and cold, her clothes itching madly against her skin, her chest moving in spasms. The reek of peppermint smothering the air in her lungs.

  She lifts her hand to knock.

  Mr. Lumley stands stiffly by her side. Mr. Lumley, who hasn’t said a word, and Sophie doesn’t blame him, though there’s a heated quality to his silence that feeds the terror inside her skull, the quiet scream inside her throat. The elevator took ages to rise to the fourth floor, and Sophie spent them all trying to think of something to say, trying to dispel the air of impending catastrophe while Mr. Lumley sucked loudly on his peppermint candy, but what did you say to a man like that, in the throes of matrimonial despair? Did you comment on the weather? Chirp: I’m sure there’s an innocent explanation? Absurd. There is no innocent explanation for Mrs. Lumley’s visit, not this morning of all mornings, not to Virginia of all people.

  If Virginia’s the one Mrs. Lumley is visiting just now.

  “Who is it?” calls Virgo, muffled by the wood, far too cheerfully.

  “It’s Sophie!” she calls back, in the same too-cheerful voice, as if they’re both enacting a pantomime. She tries to fit the key into the lock, but her eyes keep blurring. Her fingers keep slipping.

  “Allow me,” says Mr. Lumley, leaning close, drenching her in peppermint, and his hand covers hers, inserting the key without trouble, turning the lock, opening the door.

  Maybe it’s her nerves, maybe it’s the scourge of the receding bourbon in her system. Maybe it’s the series of shocks assailing her over the past few days, or the past few months. Sophie looks down at Mr. Lumley’s hand operating the key, bare and pale next to her white cotton glove, and the scream lying in her throat rises and fills her mouth.

  You.

  The door swings open.

  “Father!” Sophie gasps, almost before she realizes it’s him, but the word—really a whisper, all she can manage—is swallowed by a female shriek.

  Mr. Lumley shuts the door behind them. “There you are, Charlotte,” he says to the shrieking woman. “I think we’d better go home, don’t you?”

  Sophie jolts. Covers her mouth. Is that Mrs. Lumley? Hair askew, eyes wet, the muscles of her face slack with terror. She’s stopped shrieking. She jumps from an armchair and stands there, wringing her hands, bearing the full force of the morning light from an open window.

  And my God! Father stands near her, also rumpled. His gray hair stands out from his head in electric shock. He stares at her, at Mr. Lumley.

  “Lumley!” he whispers.

  “I’ve come for my wife, Faninal.”

  Father looks so pale and stunned, so unlike himself. The way Sophie feels on the inside, right now: terrorized and speechless. He’s wearing a gray shirt that must once have been white, and a pair of brown trousers held up by elastic suspenders. No jacket. He wets his lips, steps back, and says, “Of course.”

  Mrs. Lumley begins to babble. “I didn’t say nothing, Fred. I swear I didn’t.”

  “Shut up.” Mr. Lumley steps forward and takes her by the arm, not very gently. Mrs. Lumley falls silent. Around the room, for a brittle, teetering instant, nobody moves.

  Sophie whispers, “Father, where’s Virgo?”

  But Father doesn’t even notice. He’s staring, astonished, at the two of them: the Lumleys, side by side. Mr. Lumley turns his head and returns the stare, and there’s nothing desperate or pleading about him now. Just two rigid vertical lines, on either side of his mouth, and a tic at the corner of his eye that Sophie didn’t notice before.

  “Don’t blame her,” Father says.

  “I don’t.”

  “She didn’t come here to see me. She came to visit my daughter.”

  “Well, now. Is that so?”

  “That’s so.”

  “Huh. I’m not so sure about that. I’m not so sure I can take your word for anything, Faninal.” With his empty hand, Lumley reaches into his pocket. “I guess, if a man’s going to be thorough, he’s got to make sure this never happens—”

  “No!” Sophie darts forward, and the gun—a small revolver, flashing in the sun—turns toward her.

  “I don’t want to kill you, miss. I think you’ve been through enough. But this man here, this father of yours—”

  “Don’t,” she says. “Please, don’t. Call the police. They’re right downstairs. Please.”

  “What, and let him die in his own time, after what he did? He deserves killing. He killed your mama, in cold blood—”

  “Oh, Fred, no,” sobs Mrs. Lumley.

  “You shut up. Didn’t I tell you?” He shakes her with his left arm, hard and vicious, and she cries out.

  “Stop!” Sophie says. “Please stop!”

  Mr. Lumley turns a pair of cold, narrow eyes toward her. “What I want, you see, is some kind of assurance that this won’t happen again. And the way I see it—”

  “Sophie!” Father barks. “Stand still. Don’t say anything.”

  “—the way I see it,” Lumley continues, aiming the gun back at Father, “nobody’s going to care if a man fires a gun in self-defense, hitting a confessed murderer, saving the state the trouble of carrying out an execution.”

  Sophie leaps forward. The gun swings back toward her, and in the instant before it fires, she sees those cold, narrow eyes again, deep inside the folds of her brain, and her face opens up in a childlike scream.

  You.

  BANG.

  The gun explodes in her ears. But she doesn’t see it coming, because someone jumps before her face, grabs her by the shoulders, jerks mightily, and tosses her backward to the floor.

  She opens her eyes and stares at the gray-white ceiling, gasping, trying to move her ribs, but the body slumped upon her chest won’t move. Deadweight.

  She opens her lips, and her mouth fills with someone’s hair. Her father’s coarse gray hair, wet with copper blood.

  CHAPTER 24

  A man never knows how to say good-bye; a woman never k
nows when to say it.

  —HELEN ROWLAND

  THERESA

  On the floor, next to the telephone

  YOU BECOME, I’m afraid, a rather selfish creature when you’re expecting a baby. Or maybe it’s the baby that’s selfish, hoarding all your energy for her own exclusive use, hoarding your vitamins and your sleep and your blood.

  So there you are, imagining yourself a courageous and forthright sort of individual, the kind of woman who confronts intruders and fights back against snatchers of pocketbooks. And a suspicious character walks in, wearing a gun-sized bulge in the pocket of his rumpled brown jacket, and you drop the poker in your hands, sink to the ground, and crawl behind the sofa.

  Yes, I know. Very commendable.

  You sit with your back to the sofa back, hoping no one remembers you’re there, praying to God that the small being in your belly survives the next few minutes. Your lips actually move, in supplication to this God that you’ve railed against, pleaded with, ceased to believe in altogether. Just keep me alive, long enough for the baby to be born. Keep me alive until then, and I’ll light you a hundred candles a day, I’ll build a church, I’ll build a convent, I’ll devote my life to the sick and the wretched.

  Just keep my baby alive.

  But you can’t help overhearing the conversation. You can’t help hearing that Mrs. Lumley’s husband is here, and he’s not pleased, for some reason. That you were perhaps right about Mrs. Lumley having something to hide. That you were certainly right about that gun-shaped lump in Mr. Lumley’s jacket pocket.

  That the sweet little Sophie is a braver woman than you are.

  And here you crouch, blood hot and cold, heart rattling beyond control, thinking reprehensibly that she should just let the wrathful husband kill Faninal and leave the rest of you in peace—hating yourself for thinking it, but thinking it anyway—and then! Then!

  You spot the telephone earpiece dangling from the little table in the space between the sofa and the armchair.

  You bite back a gasp. You shut your eyes. You open them again.

  You roll on your stomach and crawl across the few yards of plush Oriental carpet, the patch of hot sunlight. You hear a scratchy tin voice: Hello? Mrs. Fitzwilliam? Hello? Is something the matter?

  You reach one long hand to the table, snatch down the metal base, and whisper in the mouthpiece, terribly hoarse: “Help! Send the police!”

  “Mrs. Fitzwilliam! Is something the matter?”

  Louder: “Police!”

  BANG!

  Shriek.

  Thump.

  SILENCE.

  (Stunned and awful.)

  You duck for the sofa—again, reprehensible—and an almighty crash fills your ears, a cataclysm of splintering wood, and a familiar voice shouts, Sophie, my God!

  The Boy! Oh, God. Not the Boy.

  BANG!

  And this time, you can’t even summon the courage to see what’s happened.

  UNTIL YOU CAN, SOMEHOW. UNTIL, amid the shouts and confusion, someone spots you on the floor and says, “Hold on, we’ve got another one.”

  You think, That sounds like the police.

  You crawl out from behind the sofa and heave your body upward, bracing each hand, and your brother exclaims, “Holy God! Sisser! What are you doing here?”

  You look briefly downward, and there are two dead men on the floor of the parlor of room 404 of the Pickwick Arms, and the police are filing in, issuing orders, swearing, contradicting, taking photos in sudden white explosions of light that hurt your eyes.

  You turn your head and vomit into a blue chintz cushion.

  OX. GOOD GOD. OX IS standing right there, jumpy and rattled and pretending otherwise, offering me a damp handkerchief. He seems to be paired up somehow with the Boy, who’s alive, thank God: alive and talking to the police in a corner of the room. I don’t see Miss Faninal, but the bedroom door is open. Police going in and out. My head is still numb and dizzy. I avoid looking at the mess on the floor, on which two sheets have already been placed, white and stained with blood.

  Faninal and Lumley. Someone has killed Mr. Lumley, in the nick of time.

  I ask my brother.

  “Rofrano,” he says, staring at the window. The morning sun casts an unkind glare on his face. His skin is pale, the whites of his eyes shot with tiny red threads. “Rofrano shot him.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Ox’s gaze shifts to me, not quite focused. “Because I was right behind him, that’s why. Saw the fellow hit the ground.” He taps his forehead. “Right between the eyes.”

  “My God.”

  “You didn’t see?”

  “I’m afraid I was hiding behind the sofa.”

  “What, you? Sisser? Hiding?”

  “Like a bunny in Mr. MacGregor’s garden.”

  He takes my shoulder, a little hard. “Are you all right, then?”

  “Perfectly well. A bit shaken.”

  “Shaken? My God. What were you doing here, anyway?”

  “I was paying a social call.”

  “My God,” he says numbly. “A social call. My God.”

  WELL. SHORTLY AFTER THAT, A detective approaches me courteously, asks me if I can describe what happened. Someone brings coffee and whisks away the old cold tray, the breakfast tray that started it all. I’m not quite sure what I tell that nice detective. Whether I make any sense at all. He takes copious notes, however, and he screws his face into an expression of utmost concentration as I speak. Eventually he lets me go. I turn to Ox, who’s sitting beside me, and ask him where Miss Faninal’s gone. Have they taken her away?

  “No,” he says. “I think she’s in the bedroom.”

  Someone has put a blanket over my shoulders. A blanket, in this heat! Wool, thick, plaid: the kind of garment Scotsmen wrap around their middles to fend off the Highland winter. I remove the thing and fold it neatly, hanging it over the back of the sofa, and I take Ox by the arm and lead him through the door into the peaceful little chamber where I slept last night. The sleep of the unsuspecting.

  The light’s dim, the chintz curtains drawn. The window faces west, so the sun hasn’t arrived yet, and it’s much cooler in here than in the living room. I pause at the threshold, allowing my eyes to adjust, and when my sight returns, it falls upon a young female form seated on the bed nearest the window. Her head is bowed, her hands rest together in her lap. Another of those Scotch blankets lies like a shroud around her shoulders. At her feet, kneeling on the rug before her, the Boy holds one large hand clasped around hers. The other hand covers her knee.

  Neither notices my presence in the doorway. I can’t tell if they’re speaking; there’s too much noise from the other room. I suppose it doesn’t matter, does it? Whether genuine words pass between the two of them. The Boy reaches up and brushes her cheek with his thumb.

  “Sophie?” Ox exclaims, behind me.

  The Boy breaks away and rises to his feet. Sophie gasps and clutches the blanket, just as it slides from her shoulders.

  “We were just looking for the lieutenant,” I say coldly.

  The Boy clears his throat. “I believe he’s still in the other room.”

  “Say—!” begins Ox, tone of outrage.

  I snatch my brother’s arm. “Don’t be a boor, darling. Come with me.”

  I don’t know why he follows me. Possibly my voice contains more authority than I imagine, or else Ox’s memory of the bullet between Lumley’s eyes is still fresh. He simmers beside me, however, as I steer him past the sheet-draped bodies and the still-dangling telephone in the direction of the nice lieutenant, who stands by the open window, air of command, surveying the scene.

  “What the devil was that about?” Ox says. “Sophie and Rofrano?”

  “You were the one who appointed him cavalier, my dear.”

  “On your recommendation! Aren’t you going to do anything about it?”

  I stop and turn to him. “Ox, darling, do keep your voice down. Can you not recognize that this is
hardly the moment to make a scene?”

  “Not make a scene? He’s in there making love to my fiancée!”

  I place my hand on Ox’s chest. “He’s consoling her, that’s all. Now, do be a gentleman, will you? No medieval outbursts.”

  “I’ll show you outbursts—”

  “Ox. Darling. Grace.”

  My poor brother. His chin sinks. He says nothing. The too-harsh sunshine strikes his tarnished hair with a clang.

  “Oh, Ox.” I pat his heart. “That’s better, isn’t it? It’s always better to behave with dignity in these matters. Do leave everything to me, won’t you? Everything will turn out all right.”

  I give him a last pat—he sinks, chastened, onto the arm of the sofa—and walk the remaining yards to the lieutenant by myself.

  “Mrs. Marshall,” he says, pushing back his hat, tucking his notebook into his jacket pocket. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “You’ve been very kind. Your men are terribly efficient. It’s all so very dreadful.”

  “I’m sorry you had to be a part of this, that’s all.”

  “Thank you,” I say, and just like that, I am exhausted. Drained of the very marrow in my bones. The sunlight strokes my arms. I knot my hands together at my middle. “Are we free to leave, Lieutenant Curtis?”

  His back holds the window, so the expression of compassion on his face is difficult to fathom. But his voice, I think, contains a measure of kindness. “I’m afraid, Mrs. Marshall, that in matters as serious as this, we would ordinarily escort all the witnesses to the station house for further questioning. Mrs. Lumley’s already been taken away.”

  “But surely—well, Lieutenant Curtis, surely this is a clear case of self-defense. You are already acquainted with Mr. Rofrano, and he behaved with such courage and prevented further bloodshed. And we have all been through such an ordeal.”

  The lieutenant hesitates. He lifts his hand and removes his hat, which he holds above the waistband of his trousers, rotating the brim under his fingers until it’s just so. “Mrs. Marshall, I don’t know if you remember my name. Curtis. I served with your son, in the Thirty-Ninth Infantry.”

  I fasten my gaze upon a point between the lieutenant’s bushy eyebrows.