by Jane Langton
“She said, ‘No child of my own.’”
50
And that afternoon the Postal Service to the Other Side delivered another letter. Leonard found it in the metal box behind Patrick’s small headstone.
He had come in the wild hope that Frieda might come back. But now he cursed himself for missing Patrick’s mother, the madwoman who wrote the letters. She had been here, she had opened the box and dropped the letter in.
Leonard lifted it out with trembling hands, slipped it out of its envelope and held it up in the grey light. It fluttered in his hands and nearly blew away.
Oh, my darling child, I’m so tired. So tired of half-measures. So tired of the burden I’ve been carrying so long. So tired of the injustice! Your father was such a mollycoddle, such a stumbling block. Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to act while he was alive. But now that he’s gone, I can set things right. Justice, justice!
Your loving Mother
Leonard thundered up the porch steps and banged on the door.
The answer came from behind him, a shout from the river. “Leonard, ahoy.”
Homer Kelly was maneuvering a canoe into the shallows. Leonard ran down the steps and helped him haul it up on the muddy shore.
“I tried to phone you,” he said, shouldering one of the paddles.
“Sorry.” Homer waved the other paddle at the river. “I’ve been out there all morning. Hey, you know what? I saw three great blue herons. How’s that for a morning’s work?”
Homer’s voice was a little hollow, because his wife’s work that morning was so much more important—except of course, as Homer kept telling himself, when considered on the scale of absolute value, where great blue herons were somewhere near the top.
Mary was moderating a panel of important scholars at the Schlesinger Library. Five learned feminists were at this moment addressing a large audience, discussing issues of gender, virtual sexuality and spiritual marriage in the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Homer felt left out.
“Here,” he said, taking Leonard’s paddle, “they go under the porch.”
Leonard followed him up the steps. “It’s another of those kooky letters. Really scary this time.”
“No kidding? That explains why your forehead’s all wrinkled with care.” Homer gestured at a chair. “Sit down.” He sat down himself and pulled off his muddy shoes.
Leonard took from his pocket the strange new letter from Patricks grave and silently handed it over.
Homer read it, then jumped to his feet. “Coffee, Leonard? I can’t handle this without a cup of coffee.” From the kitchen he yelled back, “What does she mean by half-measures?” There were rattles and bangs. “And, Christ, there it is again, the word justice. What does she mean? Sugar, Leonard? Milk?” Homer flung open the refrigerator door. “Oh, sorry, no milk.” He came back with the two mugs of coffee and handed one to Leonard. “Hey, why don’t you sit down?”
Leonard would not sit down. He stood nervously in the middle of the room, gesticulating with his cup. “Mary told me the baby’s death was Frieda’s fault, remember? She said Frieda was the babysitter.” Coffee slopped from the mug.
“Whoopsie,” said Homer, “no problem.” He bounced into the kitchen, bounced back, dropped to his knees and swabbed at the floor. “Right, Frieda was the babysitting cousin. So, of course by justice the letter must mean the mother of the baby wants revenge on the cousin.” Homer stood up and looked gravely at Leonard. “Who just happens to be her niece Frieda, the babysitter responsible for the baby’s death.”
“Homer, it was a long time ago. She was only a child.” More coffee slopped over the rim of Leonard’s cup. At once he snatched Homer’s dishcloth, dropped to his knees and swiped at the floor.
“Wait a sec, you missed some.” Homer got down again too, grabbed the cloth and groveled under the table.
There were thumps on the stairs and Mary Kelly threw open the door. At the sight of two dignified doctors of philosophy crawling on the floor she burst out laughing, dumped her briefcase on a chair and dropped on hands and knees. “Oh, goody, let’s play bears.”
“It’s all his fault,” said Homer cheerfully, getting up. “Poor guy’s all thumbs.”
“I’m afraid he’s right,” said Leonard dolefully, helping Mary to her feet. “I’m sorry.”
“Coffee, dearheart?” said Homer. “That is, if there’s any coffee left. If your oafish guest hasn’t thrown it all over the place.” Again he shouted from the kitchen. “How was the panel? Did you ladies get through the whole thing without pulling each other’s hair?”
“Oh, shut up, Homer.” Mary grinned at Leonard as Homer handed her a cup. “Well, of course there were a few scratched faces. That woman from Swarthmore had really sharp fingernails.”
They settled down. Leonard picked up the magazines on the coffee table and patted them into a cube. Homer handed Mary the strange new letter from the box behind Patrick’s little headstone. She read it and murmured. “Oh, my God.”
Leonard put the magazines down precisely in the middle of the table and related his conversation with Mrs. Winthrop. “She’s my landlady. She saw Frieda at Patrick’s grave.”
“Your landlady!”
“Yes, Mrs. Winthrop visits her husband’s grave in Mount Auburn nearly every day. It’s on Willow Avenue.”
Homer smote his forehead. “But I’ve seen her. Mrs. Winthrop’s your landlady? Mrs. Zachariah Winthrop? Widow of the great anthropologist?”
“Yes, of course.” Leonard was startled. “You’ve seen her? Where?”
“Right there on Willow Avenue in the cemetery. It was the day Mary forced me to carry on my important scholarly research on a collapsing stool, waiting for Patrick’s mother to post another letter. Of course she didn’t show, so it was a waste of time.”
Leonard leaned forward eagerly. “Did you talk to her? Mrs. Winthrop?”
“Oh, she was charming. She took me on a tour of all the dead folks in the neighborhood. She told me her mother was invited to a garden party by Isabella Stewart Gardner. Hey, Leonard, you know what kind of sandwiches they had at the garden party? You’d be interested in Mrs. Gardner’s sandwiches, Leonard. Teeny triangles, that’s what they were. Basic universal shape, right? Undergirding the universe?” Homer gazed seraphically at the ceiling. “I’m really fond of things that undergird the universe. Or overarch it. Overarching the universe, that’s nice too.”
Mary poked him and turned to Leonard. “Did I hear you correctly? Did you say that Mrs. Winthrop actually saw Frieda?”
Leonard smiled faintly. “She told me all about it. Frieda was putting flowers on Edward’s grave. She’s such an old dear, my landlady. She said hello to Frieda and pretty soon Frieda was crying on her shoulder and telling her about a terrible time when she was a child. Her parents were killed in that famous plane crash off Nova Scotia. Remember that big 747 that went down in the north Atlantic? I looked it up. It was 1991.”
“The year of Patrick’s death,” murmured Mary.
“Right, and then Frieda told Mrs. Winthrop that something also happened the day before, something so awful she couldn’t talk about it. And of course it must have been—” Leonard’s face changed, his eyes watered, he stared stupidly into space, sucked in his breath and sneezed. Recovering, he pawed at his pocket. Mary handed him a box of tissues and he disappeared behind a cloud.
It was obvious to Homer that Leonard’s sneeze was a physical response to mental anguish. Brutally he finished the sentence. “It must have been the baby’s death, which was her own damned fault.”
“Oh, God,” whispered Leonard, coming into view again.
“Well, okay, okay,” said Mary. “The point is, we’ve got to get going. We can’t just moon around in the cemetery hoping somebody will show up. Did your landlady find out where Frieda lives?”
In the tower of Babel, thought Leonard, in the chessboard town, in the mill beside the waterfall. He shook his head. “She didn’t even ask her name.”
&nbs
p; “Well, then, how do you know it was Frieda?”
“She described her. I knew it was Frieda.”
“Well, look here, Leonard,” began Homer, “that damned girl—” Mary kicked him, and he went on apologetically, “I mean that poor girl Frieda, she’s in real trouble. That insane aunt of hers, the baby’s deranged mother, wants to punish her for Patrick’s death. God knows what she’ll do.”
In her long professional career Mary had become accustomed to chairing meetings. She could handle the self-indulgent talker, the obstructionist, the muddled introducer of side-issues, the rambling storyteller. And she knew precisely when the moment for decision had arrived. In this three-person conference it was time to gavel the participants to order.
“Well, then,” she said, “what’s our first objective? We want to find Frieda, we want to find her aunt. So far we’ve had no luck with their current addresses. Oh, of course I asked Doctor Rosebush, the obstetrician, and also Doctor Faraday, the cosmetic surgeon. All they had for Mrs. Fell was a post office box number in Watertown, the same one they have in the nursing home.”
“Probably her personal post office box to the other world,” growled Homer sarcastically. “Well, did you follow it up?”
Mary glanced at Leonard. “He did.”
“Right,” said Leonard. “I went to the central post office in Watertown and asked who was paying for Box 321. At first they refused to tell me.” He shrugged. “Well, of course they have to be careful. How do they know somebody isn’t a wife beater or some kind of dangerous stalker?”
“At first?” repeated Homer. “You mean they relented?”
Leonard smiled wanly and reached out to the Kellys’ coffee table. Some of the magazines had slipped sideways. “Oh, it was so innocuous, they saw it couldn’t do any harm. The box was reassigned just last week. The Girl Scouts have it now. It’s a box number for the Girl Scouts of America.”
Homer laughed and slapped his knee.
“Meeting adjourned,” said Mary.
51
Mary had two reasons for visiting the Aberdeen Street Nursing Home.
One was to see her old friend Barbara, who had been neglected during the tumultuous inpouring of final exams and the writing of her important speech. Now that her talk was ready and her academic duties done, there was time for the duties of friendship.
The other reason was her decision to make another assault on the nursing home records. Surely the death of one of its residents, Edward Fell, would have called for all kinds of documentation, death certificates, invoices and bills addressed to the party responsible for the cost of his care? In the Aberdeen Street Nursing Home she would at last ferret out the whereabouts of Patrick’s dangerous mother.
Barbara smiled radiantly and reached out her arms as Mary came in. Barbara’s arthritic hands were cramped and gnarled, but her eyes were clear and her speech was quick. “I should have called you,” she said. “Something’s happened.”
“Let’s go to your room,” said Mary, whisking Barbara’s wheelchair away from the feeble old men and women lined up in a row, gently waiting to blur out of life.
In Barbara’s corridor her roommate Jenny stopped the wheelchair’s progress and buttonholed Mary. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said craftily. “You think I like you. Well, I don’t.”
“That’s all right, Jenny,” said Mary, smiling at her. “I like you, anyway.”
Jenny glowered and said, “That’s a lie.” Then as Mary swooped Barbara’s wheelchair through the open door of her room they could hear Jenny accosting Dorothy, the head nurse. “You think I like you, but I don’t. And what’s more, I never did and I never will.”
In the glare of the overhead fluorescent light, Barbara’s face was greenish-gray. “Pass me that bottle of pills,” she said. “It’s too soon for the next one, but the hell with it.”
“Right,” said Mary, reaching for the bottle. “The hell with it.” She extracted a pill and handed Barbara a glass of water.
Barbara swallowed, handed back the glass, leaned back with closed eyes, and explained about Jenny. “Her husband was a preacher with a big congregation of hellfire Methodists. Terrible thing, being a clergyman’s wife. I suppose Jenny had to be sweet, and nothing but sweet, to a thousand people for years and years. Now, glory be, she’s free at last.”
Mary sat down on the bed, murmured, “Free at last,” and waited.
In a moment Barbara opened her eyes and pulled herself upright. “I said I should have called you.”
“Yes, Barbara. What about?”
The fluorescent lights flickered and buzzed. “There was a ceremony,” said Barbara solemnly. “We were all invited. Presentation of a big check by Edward’s niece.”
“Edward’s niece! She’s not his niece.”
“Well, whatever. Miz Whooseywhatsis had this big cardboard check for a hundred thousand dollars. She handed it to Dorothy, and we were all supposed to clap. I didn’t.”
“Blood money,” said Mary, leaning forward eagerly.
Barbara nodded. “A bribe to shut Dorothy up. Well, I don’t think Dorothy would have accused the woman of shoving Edward down the stairs, but Whooseywhatsis didn’t want to take a chance.”
“Do you think she made a bargain?”
“You mean with Dorothy? Hell, no. But poor Dorothy, she wasn’t about to turn down a check for a hundred thousand dollars. Think what it would buy! A few motorized wheelchairs—I could use one myself—and more help. The practical nurses are run off their feet, getting everybody up, bathing and dressing all of us, changing the sheets. No, no, she couldn’t turn it down. So she had to smile and accept that big bragging piece of cardboard and say”—Barbara grimaced—“Oh, how terribly nice of you! We’re all so terribly grateful!”
Mary wanted to say, “Oh, God, yes, Barbara. You should have called me,” but she didn’t.
She stayed for an hour while they talked comfortably about their old friends, Mary’s students, the mess in Washington. The latter was Barbara’s profoundest interest. She was an ardent revolutionary who could deliver a hilarious version of the anarchist theme song, “It’s Auntie Olga’s Turn to Throw the Bomb.”
But when Jenny came back and threw her arms around Mary and cried, “You don’t like me, do you?” it was time to say goodbye. Mary hugged Jenny and kissed Barbara, then walked down the corridor to talk to the head nurse.
“Oh, she’s such an awful woman,” said Dorothy, “that Eleanor Fell. Thank the lord, I never have to see her again. It was god-awful, the way she was always taking me aside and whispering things.”
“Whispering things? What sort of things?”
There was a pause while Dorothy took on the persona of Edward’s so-called niece. Her eyes widened. Staring fiercely at Mary she whispered, “My uncle’s psychiatrist diagnosed his manic-depressive disorder and senile dementia. He advised me”—Dorothy’s whisper became a hiss—“to seek power of attorney.”
“Power of attorney?” Mary shook her head in pity. “Oh, poor Edward.”
Dorothy sighed and changed the subject. “You asked for her address and I told you we only had a box number. But then I looked way back, because I remembered that a certain Mrs. Fell had put her old mother in here once, a long time ago.” She opened a large notebook. “The old mother was a Mrs. Oliphant. She was not very happy here, and she didn’t last long. Half a minute, she’s in here somewhere.”
“Oliphant?” repeated Mary softly.
Dorothy flipped the pages. “Yes, here we are. In those days Mrs. Edward Fell lived in Cambridge at 147 Gideon Street. She probably isn’t there any more.”
“Probably not, but thank you so much,” said Mary fervently, writing it down.
Out-of-doors, she was halfway to her car when she wheeled around and went back inside.
Dorothy was sorting her files. She looked up in surprise.
“One more question,” said Mary. “How old do you think she is, this Eleanor Fell?”
“Oh”—Do
rothy gazed out the window, considering—“in her mid-forties?”
“What about her hands? Did you ever notice her hands?”
“Her hands?” Dorothy looked open-mouthed at Mary.
Mary told Homer about it later. “The way she looked at me, Homer, you would have recognized the look of wild surmise. You know, the one in the poem, the way stout Cortez stared at the Pacific.”
Homer guffawed. “Oh, right. This here continent ain’t Cathay. There’s a whole goddamn ocean between us and Cathay.” He calmed down. “What did she say?”
“She said she’d noticed it especially when Edward’s so-called niece handed over that big cardboard check. Her hands were knotted with blue veins. They were the hands of an old woman.”
52
Gideon Street in Cambridge—Mary found it on the map, tapped her finger on the spot and said, “Come with me, Homer.”
“Heck, no.” Homer shook his head sadly. “It wouldn’t work. I’ve tried that trick once too often, pretending to be back at my childhood home.” Clasping his hands, he whined, “Oh, the dear old place where I lived as a boy! Oh, please, dear lady, may I see it once more before I die?”
Mary laughed. “Last time, as I recall, a couple of drug dealers threw you out. But, Homer dear, this neighborhood won’t be like that. It’s pretty respectable.”
“That’s why it’s so right for you. Females and houses, they go together.”
Mary opened her mouth to protest, but Homer was off and away, building a tower of piffle. “It’s the nesting instinct, that’s what it is, a sex-linked gene on the chromosome chain. Mary, dear, you know perfectly well the way the mama bird behaves, lining her nest with feathers and bits of string and ten thousand square feet of oak flooring and a marble foyer and a step-down living room. All that domestic kind of thing.”
Mary laughed in spite of herself. “Oh, Homer, you know perfectly well I’m not like that.”
