The Last to See Me

by M Dressler

  “Come up, please, now, Emma Finnis,” she said.

  She turned her back on me, and I followed her into the entry with its ferns standing up in their china pots as big as soda barrels. I remembered to wipe my hands clean on my sleeves and look capable. To my right, through the high arch, was the red-papered front parlor I’d passed by before on my way to help with the laundry or the rug-beating. To my left was a matching arch that led to the White Parlor, with its marble side tables resting on tasseled carpets. And in front of me was the grand Lambry staircase with its crystal chandelier. The walnut steps came down through two landings and ended in a carved newel post, thick as a confessional.

  Over my head, some stirring, and now Mrs. Lambry was sweeping down, reaching the second landing, reaching the first, coming toward me between the banisters. She wore a blouse so finely laced it hurt to look at it. Its neck was so long it made her head look like it was sitting on top of a ship, her black hair like a sail. Her skirt was gray and trailed behind her, old-fashioned, its embroidery spread out. I stared. And to think that some girl had to bend over all those tiny stitches for hours on end, yet Mrs. Lambry, with all those flounces at her back, didn’t even see or notice what trailed behind her. What was all that work for, then?

  “Emma Rose, how are you today?” she asked politely.

  I said I was doing very well, thank you. No one will ever say Finnis manners are bad. Her hand rested for a moment on the newel post. How often she must touch that, I thought. Such a beautiful thing.

  “You can go now, Mrs. Broyle,” she said. “Emma and I have everything in hand.”

  Mrs. Broyle went down the hall.

  “It was good of Mrs. Strype to let you come.” Mrs. Lambry’s voice was low and soft, like a cushion. “I hope she could spare you without any trouble?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Would you like to come into the parlor with me and sit down?”

  I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t at all the normal thing to be called to the Lambry House only to sit down. I followed her pointed, ringed finger; it stretched toward the Red Parlor. I understood and went obediently in ahead. That plush room … it was like walking into a heartbeat. I looked around for a proper seat to take. I spotted a small one, fitted with old velvet that I thought wouldn’t mind the dust from my skirt. I brushed off my backside and sat.

  Mrs. Lambry’s head made a funny, catching motion, like a clock stopping its time.

  “You’re sitting in one of my son’s favorite chairs.”

  “Oh,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  “My eldest son. Quint. I think you might know him?” She sat down in a tall chair across from me, pulling her skirt along beside her.

  “Not to speak to, no.” Though everyone in town knew Quint Lambry, a head taller than his look-alike younger brother.

  “That’s the chair we liked to prop him up in when he was just a baby,” she said dreamily and sat back and folded her hands. “It made him look like a little king.”

  I couldn’t think of a thing to answer to that, either.

  She stayed quiet for a time, looking at me. Just looking. Was she thinking, maybe, that I would get up from the chair and choose another? If so, I knew I certainly wouldn’t. Because it wouldn’t be right. She’d asked me to sit down. She hadn’t said where. I’d made my choice, and if a person is given a choice, and is polite and well-behaved about it, too, and brushes off her backside, then there’s no reason to make her feel clumsy and wrong. Aren’t there some things—I felt my chin going up—every person is entitled to, no matter how thick her stockings?

  “My son has always been a generous boy,” she said.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “And sweet. And charming. You may have seen him, calling on people on Albion Street. While you looked out your window?”

  “What window would that be, ma’am?”

  “Mrs. Strype’s dining room. While you’re waiting on table?”

  “I wouldn’t notice; my hands are so full then.”

  I put my chin up a little higher. I couldn’t say why, but I didn’t like the prying tone in her voice and I wanted her to see it. Maybe now you’re the one sitting somewhere you shouldn’t be? I stared at her.

  “Do you know, Emma”—she smiled and changed her tone, going kind—“that I once knew your mother, Mrs. Finnis?”

  I wanted to say something kind in return. But what did I have to offer?

  “No ma’am.”

  “But I did. I was a younger wife then. New to this piece of lonely coast. Anxious and new and a little afraid. And your mother, like you, was one of those who came to help us from time to time, when we needed more hands. I remember she had hands as steady as my own mother’s. And I so appreciated that, in those days.”

  “Was—was I born yet?”

  “I don’t think so. I remember only a little boy. At least … I think it was a boy …” She frowned and looked down.

  One of my older brothers, whom I never met. Just one of the Finnis babies sleeping in Evergreen, diapered in dirt.

  “I do remember the child was a small, quiet thing.” Her eyes cleared and her brow turned smooth again. “And that your mother loved him so much. It can’t be helped, can it? A son is a special thing to a mother. As are all children, of course. And we women should always do all that we can for our children, isn’t that right?”

  I stared at her without speaking. My poor mother didn’t live long enough to do anything for me but bring me into the world.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say so. It will help you to better understand what I’m about to share with you.” She unclasped her hands and rested her wrists comfortably on the chair’s arms. “Because it is about a mother’s love that I want to talk to you today. As a mother, if I may. As a kind of parent to you, in fact. Because I know you’ve lost not only your mother but your fine father as well. How long has it been, now, since the sad event?”

  Only two years since he’d died in the apron chute accident—and doing Lambry work, too. And yet she acted as though she couldn’t remember it.

  “Two years.”

  “And how old are you now, Emma?”

  “Old enough to manage without my mother or father.”

  “No, no, I disagree! I think we never outgrow our need to be cared for by someone else, someone older. I think about how Mr. Lambry cares for me, as both my husband and my guide … I think about how I care for our children … The older must always guide the younger, I believe, if they can. As must anyone who stands, in some way, in loco parentis to another. Employers, for instance. We feel that way about our workers and their children. And that’s why I’ve called you here today, dear child. Because I do care. And because I want to share with you some wonderful, wonderful news, and guide you in a helpful direction.”

  If she’d meant to help me after I was orphaned, then why, I thought, was I only hearing about it now, two years after the loading chute broke away from the ship and cut my father’s head clean from his neck?

  “You’re thinking about what I said about needing a guide? You agree? I’m so delighted! I was so hoping you would see what I mean. But what am I doing?” She let out a happy laugh. “I shouldn’t be keeping you in any more suspense. Such a lucky thing! Such happy timing. We’ve just recently welcomed a new assistant lightkeeper to the Point, and his family. Did you hear? And the good fortune is, they’ll be needing a housekeeper at their residence. Augustus, my husband, has agreed to recommend you to the post. You’re such a fine worker, Emma—the whole village knows that. And to have the chance to work at Lighthouse Point … such a quiet, happy place … so delightfully fresh and wild and open … Well, I’m sure you’ll agree it’s just the kind of chance any young girl would jump at. And you’ll grow so fond of the Folde family, I’m sure. They have small children, and I hear they’re quite lovely and lively. And such a happiness it is for me, I can tell you, to be able to sit in this place, where your mother h
erself might have sat, and share with you such an opening”—she leaned forward, watching me closely—“as can only help you along in this world and in this life.”

  I sat, trying to imagine my dying mother in a red-cushioned Lambry chair, recommending me to the post of housekeeper at Lighthouse Point, and I wanted to ask: in what world would such a thing have happened?

  “You have nothing to say, my dear? You’re startled? But I haven’t even told you the salary!” she went on. “Five dollars a week. Five whole dollars. Only think what good use you could make of such a boon! And the Point is so remote and self-sufficient you’ll hardly ever need to spend … And in any case, it can be no good thing for a girl of your age to be at the beck and call of every rough customer at Mrs. Strype’s. Can it? When the Point is so genteel. So peaceful. I’ve always taken note of that, whenever I’ve been there. It’s like they’re all one happy little family. Not like all the comings and goings we have here, the riffraff with its bad habits, although the Ladies’ Committee and I have been doing our best to make things more civilized for all of us, with the Music Hall, and the new Lending Library, and …” Her voice trailed off, distracted.

  I waited. Not yet understanding.

  “And Mrs. Strype will be made to understand the situation. We’ll help her make other arrangements for assistance. But you haven’t said anything about what you need, Emma.” She went on leaning forward in her fine, laced blouse but seemed nervous now, uneasy. “Do you like the idea? Of caring only for one family? And with two whole hours off every afternoon, or so I’ve been told? And you should know the housekeeper’s quarters are so very charming. I’ve been told it’s a little cottage or anyway a room, all by itself, right behind the assistant lightkeeper’s house. You could make something wonderful and pleasant out of such a place, I’m sure of it.”

  Something strange had happened. Was still happening. The Lambrys had suddenly decided they wanted to help me, to help me get away from Benito. But why? Two years after my father’s death they had found me a good position but not, it seemed, with their own family. They wanted to put me into someone else’s family.

  And then, sitting in their son’s chair, I understood.

  “Only five dollars a week, Mrs. Lambry?”

  “Plus your room and board.”

  “It’s awfully lonely at the Point though, I hear. And difficult to get into town. If you need to.”

  “Six dollars then. I’m sure Augustus could arrange it with the head lightkeeper. And we’ll find a way for conveying you there as well. In one of our own wagons.”

  “I know seven is a lucky number. So the signs outside the Chinese temple say.”

  “That’s true enough. Seven dollars. I think it can be done. And the wagon. One way.”

  One way, north. To a ragged spit of rock jutting out into the sea. Far enough out to warn a ship before it drew too close to a false cove. Far enough away to keep out of sight a girl, a Finnis, that a mother didn’t want her son to look at.

  “Seven dollars, Mrs. Lambry.”

  “You’ll take it then?” She sat back, relieved. “Very good! Then let me return you to Mrs. Strype. Just until we can get everything settled, of course.”

  I didn’t move. “And how long will that be, Mrs. Lambry?”

  “I’m sure it will be no more than a few days. Come now.” She stood and swept her skirt aside and made a sign for me to rise. “Impatience to be free is no sin.” She smiled.

  Sometimes, at least according to the priest, it was.

  I stood slowly. Mrs. Lambry pointed toward the door, her long neck reaching up again, quivering, like a pine that knows it’s just missed being cut.

  8

  But now Mrs. Augustus Lambry is dead. And her girls in their honey-colored dresses, too. And her two boys. And Mrs. Broyle. And Mrs. Strype. And Tommy Allston from the telegraph office, who went off to fight in the war in France because he thought the girls would be nicer there. And all the men from the boardinghouse, not riffraff but honest lumberjacks. And everyone in the village then. There’s only me now. The last.

  Me going out of the house. Me floating over the garden gate. Me not bought by anyone, not anymore. Going because I choose to go. Because I have my plans, too.

  I find Pratt just finishing his breakfast at the Main Street Hotel. He’s standing over his table by the window, dropping the waiter’s tip beside his empty plate. He takes his black coat from the hotel’s brass hook. He steps out of sight and then appears again, passing through the salt-coated doors. He has a paper map rolled up in his hands, the one all the tourists pick up that shows which buildings are historic and when the restaurants and the museums are open, and who lies sleeping in Evergreen that’s important enough to visit. The hunter turns his collar up at the curb. His automobile is a fine thing—a two-seater, full of style—though bought and ridden, never forget it, over the backs of luckless human souls.

  Pratt drives as if he knows exactly which cemetery gate he seeks. I remember he told Ellen he’d already stopped in at Evergreen once. So now he’s going back, I suppose, to give us dead a better look. Evergreen has not one but three graveyards, the oldest from the days when the first settlers put their heels and axes to the trees; then the Catholics crowding together, including my family (even though my Da was never much one for priests and prayers); and then the war dead, the white markers for Tommy and all the others who never came home again. Pratt pulls his car in at the first stony gate and leaves it there. He stands under our fine gray-shingled church, its stained glass windows filled with chariots of yellow fire and white doves flashing over a blue sea, and two logs lashed together with rope, the Holy Cross.

  He takes a minute to read over the stones of the dead priests lying in their little nest of fenced grass by themselves, apart from us townsfolk. Then he looks at his map again. His shoes grow damp as he plods over the wet grass. The paths are narrow at Evergreen, and moss and turf grow over the lanes, bare ground showing only where some recent grave has been dug, a fresh body laid in, or where the animals have been busy tunneling and trafficking between the coffins and the junipers.

  He approaches the Lambry monument. It stands as big and solitary as a steeple cut from a church. The air is very quiet. The obelisk looms over him, a pointed finger made of marble. Its base is a cold, chiseled pedestal with four sides and graves all around it. A Lambry ghost must be considered, if the Lambry House is haunted. Any hunter would come to the same conclusion. Pratt studies the map and raises his eyes to the gouged lettering:

  DEDICATED TO THE EVERLASTING MEMORY OF

  LAMBRY

  FIRST CITIZENS OF THIS VILLAGE

  WHO PLANTED THE SEEDS OF A

  GREAT PROSPERITY

  TRANSFORMED WILDERNESS INTO A

  SEAT OF DELIGHT

  AND GAVE GENEROUSLY TO THE WORLD

  AND TO GOD’S HOLY MISSION

  The marble hasn’t been scrubbed since long before Alice died, and the lichen has started to bloom in orange posies near the grass. All the Lambrys who died in this village lie in a circle here, packed in earth like herring stacked in salt. Above them their spire reaches high as the tallest cypress trees, with a good view at the top, for me, of the village and the headland and the rocks where the seals lie patting their stomachs.

  I wait, patiently. It takes a while for Pratt to walk the circle and read each headstone. At last he comes to Alice’s grave. He sees two footprints left in the damp soil. A workman’s boots. Manoel’s, though he can’t know that. The handyman’s last words to Alice, after they had fought all over the house like a broom and a cat, were that he didn’t need to take any more of her orders, listen to any more of her guff. The words on Alice’s headstone, which Pratt looks over now, are the ones her will ordered the mason to chisel into the marble: THE LAST TO SEE ME BE THE FIRST TO REJOICE.

  Pratt’s hand creeps to his chest in the way I’m beginning to grow accustomed to it doing. He waits, pressed to himself, and doesn’t move. I still don’t understand him�
��this hunter who doesn’t shoot often and quickly, the way the others do—so I move safely into the trees as he stares for a while longer at Alice’s tomb before letting his hand fall and lifting his nose to the breeze. He seems to shrug something from his back and turns and leaves the Lambrys to their sleep. He walks down to the rows of the Children’s Garden and pauses over each grief. SCARLET FEVER TOOK OUR DEAREST. OUR LIGHT THAT WAS, IS GONE FOREVER. BUDDED ON EARTH, BLOOMING IN HEAVEN. ALL BOYS, OBEY YOUR PARENTS.

  He’s at the row where my older brothers rest under tiny footstones. John and Michael. A little farther down, two more, PRECIOUS BOY and PRECIOUS BABY, who never made it to church, sliding nameless under their bibs of grass.

  My Da told me that my mother became fearful of baptism, and before she died begged him not to take me to St. Clements too soon but to let my heart grow strong, first. I didn’t visit a priest until I was nearly four years old, my father judging it safe for me by then. He tugged me along, both of us reluctant, toward the font, where the priest dribbled water on my forehead as I looked up at the great colored windows, at the dove, and the cross, and the fire, and the blue and white glass that stood in for the sea. I didn’t feel God in the room, truthfully, but I felt the tide somehow, and it seemed to me that it was much stronger than any invisible host, and more certain, too.

  I love my dead family. Though I never knew most of them. I love them now, so much it hurts. I love them stupidly and blindly, the way you love a sad tune that was written before you were born but doesn’t feel as though it could have been, the words are so fresh. PRECIOUS BOY. I love them even though there is nothing I can do for them as Pratt passes by.

  Pratt doesn’t stop at my father’s grave or my mother’s, either. Because there’s no map that tells of my parents’ lives. Only their names are left behind. JEAN ANNE FINNIS, 1896 and JOHN FINNIS, 1912. Pratt is bigger than my Da, who was lean for a timberman and fit easily into his coffin, with his cut head set to one side. My mother was slim-boned, Da said, like me.