Then, even if she had managed to hide the rape from her parents, the results of it would be impossible to conceal. There would have been fury, beatings, too, accusations about her wanton ways rather than support, understanding, and love. Some women in that position had been known to take their own lives rather than live with such monstrous shame. But Flora survived. Sam survived. Layla Endicott, to whom Flora must have confided everything at some point, surely in whispers and tears, took it upon herself to make Sam aware of why her father was a phantom.
At the time, Sam was eleven years old. Layla’s words were shocking, naturally, but even more shocking and disappointing was that Flora hadn’t come to her with the truth herself. Sam confronted her at a strategic moment when the grandparents were out of the house. Flora denied nothing, and when Sam forced her to explain why she’d kept quiet all that time, Flora said, “I just wanted to think it never happened.”
Flora was alone in the house when Sam returned after work. She stood at the stove, stirring a pot of chili from the smell of it. Chili was an important dish in their family. When Flora made it, something big was in the wind, such as the day before Sam left for Los Angeles or the evening after it was confirmed that her own father was terminally ill with lung cancer, caused by decades of cigarettes whose smell Sam could still detect in the small bedrooms upstairs, including hers, though the walls had all been repainted since.
Sam got herself a bottle of beer from the refrigerator. She’d recently started drinking beer on the advice of Caroline Boone, who declared that a serving a day was responsible for her still being alive at the age of 97. Although alcohol was not served to the residents and was actively discouraged, Caroline’s grandson kept her supplied with a weekly six-pack (Caroline abstained on Sunday), which she was allowed to keep in the kitchen. When some of the bottles went missing, Sam knew one or more of her fellow employees were helping themselves. She suggested that Caroline’s grandson provide a small refrigerator, the kind that had a key like in fancier hotels—though Sam had never seen one herself, she remembered Suki mentioned them, calling them “mini-bars.” The suggestion was taken; the refrigerator now sat in a corner of the closet, and the key hung on a string around Caroline’s neck, which she refused to remove, even when bathing. The chronically damp string caused a rash, so a thin silver chain was found somewhere to replace it.
Flora tasted the chili and nodded to herself in satisfaction. She put the lid on the pot, the spoon on a plate by the stove, and took off her apron, one that Sam had given her for Christmas with an image of a smiling reindeer holding a cocktail in its cartoon hoof. She ran the water, filled the sink that held a number of utensils she’d used to make the chili, poured a stream of bright orange dish soap in, and watched a mound of bubbles rise.
Seeing it, Sam was suddenly taken back. She was eight years old. She and Flora and the grandparents were at Lake Placid, in a cabin, on vacation. They’d never taken a vacation before. Her grandfather worked on a dairy farm.
“Cows don’t take time off,” he said.
But then, they had, apparently. Later, Sam learned that her grandfather had been fired. They’d all gone away so the adults could confer about a plan of action, which seemed more complicated than just his looking for a new job.
Sam’s chore was to wash dishes. She had made a mass of bubbles, too. She loved them, loved washing, even loved drying.
She broke a cup, or a plate, she couldn’t remember which. Her grandmother swept the shards into a rusted dustpan, threw them into the metal trash container out back, propped the broom in the corner of the kitchen, and then hit Sam hard enough to make her head ring. Her nose bled down her white, sleeveless shirt, which her mother told her not to wear because it emphasized her fat arms. Dirtying the shirt enraged the grandmother further, and as she raised her hand once more, Sam picked up a heavy wooden stool and said, “I’ll beat the crap out of you if you touch me again.” Her grandmother was so surprised she just stood there with her hand still raised until Flora got between them and hauled Sam out, still holding the stool. A couple of years later, Sam was taller than her grandmother. They took to avoiding each other from then on.
Flora turned off the water. She took a pitcher of iced tea out of the refrigerator. The refrigerator was yellow. So was the stove. She sat down. Her black sweatshirt was stained with tomato sauce.
Flora drank iced tea. Sam sipped her beer. Flora’s brow was knit; the lines in her face were deep. She was only in her mid-forties but looked considerably older, something about which she occasionally complained and then once sought to correct by dying her hair raven black.
“Remember all that junk we threw out a couple of weekends ago?” Flora asked.
“Sure.”
“We kept that box of pictures. You want to go through them with me?”
Sam wasn’t interested in old pictures. At work she was surrounded by them, always black and white, of husbands and wives who were long gone. She supposed they were useful for keeping the mind alive, but the wear and tear on the heart must be terrible.
Unless with time, love and longing faded. Was that possible? Could the heart’s fire dim and go out altogether?
If so, then it was Nature’s mercy, bestowing inner calm before meeting eternity.
“You’ve been in the dumps for days,” Flora said.
“And you think pictures will cheer me up.”
“They can be fun to look at. Makes you imagine life back then.”
“I prefer poetry.”
From across the road, the sound of car doors being slammed reached them. Sam had left the back door open when she came in, making the noise audible. There were three slams, which meant that Lucy had returned with at least two of her children. Sam missed them. Maybe she should invite them all over for chili. She put the idea to Flora.
“Really?” Flora asked.
“Oh, I guess not. She probably doesn’t want to see me right now.”
“What did you do?”
Sam put her beer bottle on the table and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Don’t give me that. You think I did something to Lucy, and that’s why I haven’t been seeing her, right?”
“I don’t think anything of the kind.” Flora’s color was rising. Sam rinsed out her bottle in the sink. She took another from the refrigerator. She sat back down.
“Why do you assume I’m to blame? What if I’m not to blame at all? What if all I did was try to help?” Her voice was firm and even, not a hint of rage.
“I don’t think you’re to blame for anything.”
“The hell you don’t. Let’s consider the case of your dear departed parents. You always told me not to piss them off, to do what they wanted so they wouldn’t get mad. You know what? They got mad anyway because they were a couple of crazy fucks. And you made me think it was my fault. It wasn’t. It was their fault for being intolerant, uptight pains-in-the ass. I could have been Miss Goody Two Shoes and they’d have hated me, because I was a reminder every single day that you’d been raped.”
Flora put her face in her hands and for a very brief moment Sam was glad she’d wounded her. When her mother looked at her again, Sam wasn’t glad.
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you about this for a while. In fact, I wanted to bring it up just the other day.”
“Bring what up?”
Flora said nothing. She was quiet so long, Sam finally said, “Well?”
“It’s hard.”
“Quit stalling!”
Again, Flora just sat. Sam put her palms on the table, ready to stand up and leave the room.
&
nbsp; “I wasn’t raped. I only said so because I didn’t want my parents to think I’d let him,” Flora said.
“Wait.”
Flora raised her hand to say Sam should be quiet and listen.
She’d been in love. He said he was in love with her. Such an old story, she couldn’t believe she fell for it, but she had. Had Sam ever considered that the history of the world could be written on the hearts of deceived women? Her mother’s poetic turn of phrase was new—a part of her, like the truth about Sam’s origin, that she’d kept to herself.
He said he wanted to get married, and though Flora wanted very badly to believe him, she was worried that his family would never approve. He said they’d be won over by her in an instant, then never brought her home. She came to see that he had no intention of marrying her, that he probably wasn’t even in love with her. When she told him she was pregnant, he bolted.
“So, little Flora gets herself knocked up, passes herself off as a rape victim who bravely keeps her child, and raises that child on a fat, fucking lie,” Sam said.
Flora looked grim.
“Did you tell Layla Endicott the truth, or did you lie to her, too?” Sam asked.
“I lied. I hadn’t meant to. I mean, I didn’t want to tell her anything, but she saw me come and go, my stomach growing all the time.”
Lucy’s children were playing outside. The eldest, Alice, had a high, bossy voice. She was only eight, but Lucy relied on her to take the others in hand. Sam thought of her as Little Lucy, a name that had made Lucy smile, and Alice frown.
“And your parents bought the whole story, no questions asked,” Sam said.
“Yes.”
“And didn’t report it.”
“No.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I’d brought shame on them.”
“So they didn’t care about seeing justice done. They just wanted to sweep it under the rug.”
Flora said nothing.
“How did they explain me to their friends?”
“They didn’t have any.”
Sam couldn’t remember anyone coming to the house for dinner, a cup of coffee, a game of cards.
“What about your friends?”
“I only had one. I told her what I told everyone else.”
“Who was it?”
“Mayva Barns. You met her years ago, before she moved south.”
A tall, skinny woman with wispy hair came to mind. She’d worn clogs that made noise on the wood floors. She took Sam to the lake once, without Flora or the grandparents. Her car had a strong smell of dog. She told Sam the dog’s name was Eloise, which Sam found funny. She decided that Eloise was pretty, with white fur and a black nose. She wanted a dog, and Flora said she couldn’t have one. The grandparents were firmly opposed.
“Why didn’t you move out?” she asked.
“I didn’t think I could manage by myself.”
When Sam’s grandmother wasn’t busy at her church, she cooked, cleaned, laundered, all in a state of silent fury. She’d been a small woman with bright blue eyes, and held herself taut, as if wrapped around a steel cable. Sam’s grandfather wasn’t much taller than his wife, and he carried himself in the same stern way, until he fell ill, when he seemed to soften and shrink.
There had been other kids at school who didn’t have fathers. Divorce was most often the reason. Sam told people her father had died, which was what Flora had told her many times with an emphasis that now rang false.
“He’s not really dead, is he?” Sam asked.
“No.”
“And never actually left Dunston?”
“Right.”
“You know this how?”
“I looked in the phone book.”
Flora rose and stirred the chili. She put the spoon down, and didn’t return to the table. Sam finished her beer. Lucy’s kids must have gone inside. It was getting on dinnertime. Soon Chuck would lumber through the door with his inane good cheer.
“Does he know all of this? Chuck, I mean?” Sam asked.
“Some.”
“What part?”
“That I was involved with someone and we didn’t get married.”
“Doesn’t take a fucking rocket scientist to figure that out, Mom.”
Flora looked at her with a blend of fear and despair.
“Why are you telling me now? Why not before?”
“Because his father died.”
Franklin Delacourt’s death had been in the paper that he owned along with two radio stations. His wife had died years before. His house was up for sale, which meant Henry could cash it out. It was a big property. The whole estate would be hefty. Sam should go and stake her claim.
“Hold on,” Sam said.
The idea was nuts, yet she couldn’t overlook that she’d been poor all her life. So, obviously, had Flora. The only asset Flora had was the rickety house she was standing in. Sam was no genius at real estate, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t worth a whole lot. The assessed value had dropped for the last few years. Flora would have been thinking about that when she put two and two together.
“Why don’t you go and stake your own?” Sam asked.
“I might get something, if you were still a minor, but you’re not.”
“You’ve really given this a lot of thought.”
Flora shrugged.
“You’re hoping I’ll reward your good advice, which I’m sure as shit not likely to do, given what you put me through with your lying bullshit, unless you made the case that I owed it to you, like a, what’s that called, a finder’s fee.”
Sam could see that this was exactly what her mother had had in mind.
“What makes you think I’ll get anything, anyway?” Sam asked.
“Because you’ll hire a lawyer and insist on a DNA test.”
“Aren’t you the clever one.”
Flora sat down. She seemed wrung out. But then, she always seemed that way. As long as Sam could remember, her mother had been as drab and dismal as the brown plaid wallpaper on the kitchen walls. Once, though, she must have been bright and shiny, back when she was falling for Henry Delacourt.
Chuck’s car rolled up the driveway. He came through the door humming. He was deeply tanned from working outdoors. His hands were dirty.
“Hello, lovely ladies!” he said. He went right to the sink and washed up. Sam didn’t understand why he never did this before leaving work. It was as if he needed to mark his territory by leaving grime. He wiped his hand on the dishtowel Flora kept folded on the counter. He tossed it back down, without refolding it. He helped himself to a bottle of Sam’s beer. He took a long, eager drink.
“You two look like the bill collector’s been banging on the door. What’s up?” he asked. He touched the back of Flora’s neck.
“Just girl talk,” Sam said.
Chuck nodded solemnly.
“Whatever you got cooking smells awful good,” he said.
“I’m going for a walk,” Sam said.
“Samantha—” Flora said, just after Sam went out the door.
chapter twenty-four
Eunice asked her to come for Barry’s birthday. Sam didn’t know why Barry would want her there. Eunice said new faces were called for. She’d invited Angie Dugan from Lindell, and told her she could bring someone. Sam said she’d have to see if she were free, though of course she was. These days, all she did was go to work and go home, where Flora made herself scarce, thank God, by spending most of her time at Chuck’s.
; Sam went through the box of pictures Flora had suggested she take a look at the day she spilled her news. They were all of Henry Delacourt. The man must have a huge ego, to give away so many shots of himself. There he was, on a sailboat, rowing with his college team, standing under the Eiffel Tower, on a cobblestone street. He was tall and fit. Sam decided that she looked a little like him, after all.
As her curiosity about him grew so did her rage. He got Flora pregnant, then just walked away. Did he know she kept the baby? Had he ever wondered?
She drove along the lakeshore to Eunice’s house. Their place was hard to find because the white post with the address was set back from the road. Sam had to circle around twice. Eunice should have put up a sign or tied some balloons to it. The driveway was long and descended a good sixty feet before leveling out in front of a modern-style property where a few other cars were already parked. Sam put her station wagon where no one could pull in behind her so she could leave when she wanted.
Eunice had said not to bring a present. Sam didn’t feel right showing up with nothing. She’d never met Barry before and knew nothing about him except that he owned a bar, but figured she couldn’t go wrong with a tastefully decorated coffee mug. The one she chose had an image of the Dunston University clock tower. She’d climbed it once, several years before. One hundred and sixty-one steps had winded the hell out of her on the way up. Then, coming down, her knees strained and burned.
The front door was open, and no one was in the entry hall. A wooden table along the wall held a small bouquet of white flowers. Sam put her gift there. The sound of mellow jazz led down a hall and into an open room with a wall of glass windows looking right out over the lake. The sky was restless, and the rushing clouds cast moving shadows on the water. It seemed like a beautiful place to live, and Sam felt a pang of longing.
Voices in the kitchen were light and pleasant. Eunice was there, removing a baking sheet from a wall oven. She wore a dress. Sam could see that she wasn’t used to dresses from the way she kept tugging at the hem after she placed the sheet on the counter to cool. When she turned and saw Sam she smiled a tense, anxious smile. It was strange to see her outside of work, as if Lindell was their only world. For a moment, they were like aliens landing roughly on a new planet. The moment passed quickly. Eunice said she was so glad Sam could make it.
Women Within Page 22
