by Nora Carroll
“What was going on in there?” Jess asked.
“No one knew, but we feared the worst. Alvin Whitmire had a car, so we sent him over to Ironton to fetch the minister. I remember that Thomas’s whole body was shaking with these deep, horrible sobs—the sound filled the cottage. A big man like that, you just don’t expect to hear him cry. I wanted to shoo all the people away from the cottage. I remember I was afraid that someone would hear him crying, and I thought that later he’d be embarrassed. The oddest thing I remember was that the Indian girls were out front.”
“The Indian girls?”
“Oh, you’re too young to remember. There used to be a camp, about half a mile up the road. On Sunday afternoons, the squaws came, selling sweetgrass baskets woven through with porcupine quills. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the young girls came, selling cut flowers, gladiolas and such. Everybody used to buy them then. The flowers looked pretty, and then, of course, you felt sorry for the girls having to live out there in the camp.”
“So then the minister came and they buried her?”
“Well, dear, there’s a little more to the story than that.” Mrs. Lewis was peering at Jess, her blue eyes sharp and alert. “I need to be sure that you really want to know.”
“That’s what I came here for,” said Jess. She paused for a minute, then forced herself to continue. “Coming here has made me realize that there are a lot of things about my life that I’ve never really understood. I should have asked Mamie . . . ” She looked up at Mrs. Lewis, and when she saw that the old woman’s face was kind and encouraging, she continued. “I guess I’ve always had the feeling that I never really got the straight story . . . ”
Mrs. Lewis smoothed her afghan again and then put her hands down on the little leather-bound volume in her lap, about to open it.
“Do you think you could be a dear and bring me a tumbler of water, Jess. I’m afraid my mouth is a little too dry to read.”
Jess found a glass in the kitchen cupboard and filled it with cool water from the tap. She hesitated, looking out the window.
Jess wasn’t exactly sure what she was looking for. Was there something important in that little brown book? Something she should have known? Would it have mattered if she had known sooner? Jess picked up the glass of water and walked back out to the porch.
She was ready to find out.
“When George examined Lila, he found neither pulse nor breath of life. She was as cold as a stone. Thomas was in the greatest state of shock. He kept repeating over and over again, ‘But she didn’t drown—she made it across. I saw her standing in shallow water. She was standing there, and then she just keeled over.’ George poured him a stiff shot of bourbon, wrapped him in a Pendleton blanket, and said sternly, ‘Captain Cleves, get yourself dried out and pulled together.’ The man had been through the war and everything, but somehow he just couldn’t handle the loss of that young girl.” She shook her head, remembering.
“George shut the door to the back bedroom, there where the poor dead girl lay, telling me that he needed to do a more thorough examination. A few minutes later, he came out and went into the washroom to wash up. Before long, Alvin Whitmire came in with the minister and George explained that the poor girl had drowned.”
The slim leather volume still lay unopened on Mrs. Lewis’s lap, but now she started stroking the binding with her index finger, still deep in thought. Jess thought the old woman had nothing else to say, but then she continued.
“Three nights later, George woke me in the middle of the night. He had not come to bed that night—he was still wearing his rumpled clothes, and in the dark bedroom, his face looked haggard. It was not unusual for him to be called out in the middle of the night, you see. He often went out to the Indian camp and was always called out in the case of a difficult labor. ‘May,’ he whispered to me, ‘I’m not sure if I have done right.’
“I sat up, now fully awake, saying to him, ‘What, what can it be, my love?’ He said he had not told me whole truth because he didn’t see the point. The girl was dead, her mother was crazy, and her husband was abroad. Nobody knew the whole truth except for George and Lila’s sister, Mamie—and me, now that he had told me.”
Mrs. Lewis paused and stared intently at Jess. “It was a terrible burden. I’ve kept that secret through all of these long years.”
Jess nodded but said nothing.
“I remember that night so clearly. Moonlight shone in our bedroom window, casting a diamond of light on our white bedspread. The terrible rainstorm of early evening had passed, and in the pale light, I could see my husband’s face—the handsome, craggy contours, the wide brow of intelligence and the soft eyes of compassion. He held my hands tight as he spoke to me in his soft voice: ‘Lila did not drown. She had recently delivered a child. Such a slim chance, so slim, that the baby was born alive . . .’”
When Mrs. Lewis finished this recital, she had such a distant look that Jess had the impression that she could see her late husband’s face before her. She sat in silence, until Jess prodded her to continue.
“A child . . . ?” Jess said.
“The truth is that your great-aunt Lila didn’t drown. She died of a massive hemorrhage.”
“But she was out swimming. I’m sorry. But it doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well, I’m not a medical person like my dear George, but I’ll explain as best I can.” As though she had forgotten all about it, she caught sight of the ledger in her lap. She picked up the crumbling volume slowly and opened it to a yellowed page covered with handwritten script. She coughed a little and then picked up her glass and took a sip of water.
“Perhaps if I read this to you, it will all be more clear. These are Dr. Lewis’s medical records.” Taking another sip of water, she began to read.
“Thursday, May 30th, 1922 . . .”
Mrs. Lewis paused, then cleared her throat.
“My voice is getting tired, Jess. Perhaps it would be better if you read it to yourself.” She handed the volume to Jess.
Summoned at emergency behest to examine Mrs. Lila Tretheway Flagg, female, seventeen years of age. Two o’clock in the afternoon, Mrs. Flagg is carried to me by Capt. Thomas Cleves, who states that Mrs. Flagg had lost consciousness and fallen into shallow water after swimming approximately fifteen minutes. Mrs. Flagg presented with the following physical findings: Color: pale. Temperature: cool. Pulse: none. Respiration: none. Pupils: fixed, dilated, and nonresponsive to light. Serous fluid in vaginal vault and on mediolateral aspects of thighs. First-degree lacerations of perineum, boggy atonic uterus, fundus three fingerbreadths superior to umbilicus. Retained placental fragment adherent to posterior uterine wall. Probable cause of death: puerperal hemorrhage. Fetal condition: unknown.
Jess held the small dusty volume in her hand. The pages were so yellowed, the handwriting so florid, and the ink so stained that it was difficult for her to make out the words. Though she understood most of them individually, she was having trouble understanding what all of it meant. She read over the entry three times, and then looked up at Mrs. Lewis, who was peering at her with the greatest attention.
“I’m sorry, it’s very medical. I’m not sure I understand it completely . . . ” Jess said.
“As close as Dr. Lewis could figure, from what he explained to me, she had to have delivered a baby earlier that day. She must have abandoned it somewhere. Dr. Lewis believed that she bled to death, out there in the lake, and then she passed out, just as she reached shore.”
“Is that possible?”
“There are times when a hemorrhage is delayed, when a woman can bleed to death hours, even days, after she has delivered a child.”
“But are you . . . It makes no sense . . . How can you be sure?”
“Dr. Lewis trained at Boston Lying-In. Obstetrics was his specialty. I was a maternity nurse. We met there, in Boston, just after the war. This was an
unusual case, but sadly, not unheard-of. Sometimes, a woman delivers a baby alone, and abandons it. Rare, of course, and so sad. It can be very dangerous as well.”
“But nobody knew? She told no one?”
“She hid it from everyone—perhaps even from herself. I know I saw her many times that summer, and though I knew she had a problem, I did not suspect that one.”
“Did anyone ever find out what happened to the baby?”
“The baby was never found. You know, it wouldn’t have lived more than an hour or two if it wasn’t born dead in the first place . . . ”
“Do you think she . . . killed it?”
“I think that’s something we will never know. In a case like this, you wish the mother had lived long enough that you could have asked her why—but then, of course, think how awful for her, for the family, if she had lived and then had to forever deal with the truth of what she had done. Lila was whiter than the driven snow when she lay in her casket. I’ve never seen a corpse so pale.”
“Strange. That’s the one thing about Lila that Mamie told me. She used to tell me about her funeral. She said that she lay in an open casket, and looked as white and cold as a stone. The only other thing I remember her telling me is that Lila’s funeral was the only time she ever saw Thomas Cleves cry.”
May looked oddly at Jess.
“Your grandmother wasn’t at the funeral, Jess dear. Thomas Cleves wasn’t there either. They ran away that very same night Lila died. Left in the middle of a rainstorm, and never came back . . . not for a few years anyway.”
Jess sat without speaking, looking out the window at the placid blue lake, the still waters that held so much of her family’s history. She gently rubbed the outside of the brown-leather book, seeing the orangey dust coming off onto her fingers. There were a few sailboats out on the lake, not many as there was little wind. From The Rafters’s porch, Jess could see a bit of the bathing beach: a cluster of mothers in beach chairs and swarms of children dabbling in the water.
“Mrs. Lewis,” Jess said. “Did you know that May thirtieth is the day that my mother was born?”
Mrs. Lewis paused before speaking.
“I think that I did, child. Yes, I think that I did.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
MAMIE
The night that Jess went off to the picnic at Hemingway Point with the Whitmire boy, I spent a long time sitting out on the porch swing. I had my mending basket and was enjoying the solitude. It was a pleasant night, though a bit cool, and I was wearing my little black cashmere sweater; it was just cool enough for that.
I had noticed the way that Jess arranged herself, taking extra time in front of the mirror, touching at her hair with nervous, fluttery fingers. The girls in those days all seemed to dress like boys anyway, jeans and T-shirts all the time. Still, there was something fussy about the way she tied her blue sweatshirt around her waist, and pulled a few loose hairs out of her ponytail to frame her face. Indeed, she was lovely—she had the high pink flush of a girl just come of age. Jess was seventeen. The very same age at which my dear sister, Lila, departed. She looked so much like Lila too. That summer I always had the urge to keep her close to me, even as I knew that she needed to live her life.
“Take care, Jess dear,” I said to her, trying as I might to let her go on thinking that, as an old lady, I was bat-blind when it came to matters of love. Looking through the cottage windows from the porch, I watched her white T-shirt fade into the shadows inside and then disappear. Then: bang as the kitchen screen door slammed shut behind her.
Earlier that day, I had seen the big, good-looking Whitmire boy looking at her. She was playing Ping-Pong on the clubhouse porch, and he was hanging around with his clubs, hitting golf balls down the bluff, swinging around with each arc of his stroke to catch sight of her.
I was already feeling the brittleness in my bones, the ache with the early-morning cottage chill. I knew that I would not always be there to keep my summer vigil over the lake. How lovely it would be if Jess grew attached to a Wequetona boy.
I remember how I felt that evening, looking at the shining path of light that the moon traced along the water, hearing the gentle clanging of a sailboat moored to its buoy, the buzz of the cicadas, louder on the wooded side of the cottage. It was hard to believe that at one time, so long ago, I had left in despair, assuming I’d never come back. My eyes took in the familiar look of a Pine Lake evening, and I felt that night that I had been rewarded for my patience. I had lived through hard times, but the truth is, the hard times had passed. I had lived long enough to see Margaret grow up and then Jess grow up after her. Now I was an old woman, on my Wequetona porch; it was only the house itself and I that could bear witness to where we had been. The chain supporting the porch swing made a soft, rhythmic creaking sound as I sat there, a woman, a house, a place, all one.
With a start I awoke later; I had fallen asleep there on the porch swing, my mending still clutched in my lap. Mortified, I wiped away the thin stream of spittle from my chin, even though it was dim on the porch and there was no one around to see. I was just patting my hair straight and gathering up my things when I saw a figure come around the side of the house.
Before I could even see him clearly, I felt the strangest sensation, a tug, like the pull of gravity had just gotten stronger. There was something about the way the figure walked, an economy of movement, a kind of catlike grace. Deep from a part of my heart that I thought had shriveled up and died forever, I felt it thump hard. For a moment, I was sure I was seeing Thomas. But of course, that was impossible. A second later, the figure emerged from the shadows and I saw that he was just a boy, dark haired and slight of build. He was ever so like him. And yet not. Like him, but not him, a shadow, a visitation. Not unlike the way I would come upon Jess and see a glimmer of Lila, but then again, not Lila, not even slightly like her at all.
“Miss Mamie?” The boy said, his tone deferential.
“What is it?” I was surprised by the sound of my own voice, an old lady’s voice, reedy and dry.
“Miss Mamie, forgive me for intruding like this, I’m terribly sorry, it’s just that . . . ”
“Do I know you, son?” I said, leaning forward, peering at him. His face, which at first blush had seemed familiar, now seemed to be a stranger’s face, one of those unkempt teenagers who wore his hair hanging down around his shirt collar.
“Oh, sorry,” he said, now seeming awkward. “I’m Daniel Painter . . . I need to talk to you . . . It’s about Jess . . . ” I must not have registered his name, because I was immediately panicked that something had happened to Jess.
“Jess?” I said, sitting up straighter, now wide-awake. “What is it, young man? Is something wrong?” I could feel my heart banging against the inside of my rib cage. “Has there been an accident?”
I still remember the grace of that boy as he knelt down beside me, an old lady and a perfect stranger to him. I remember the poise with which he spoke to me.
I saw a yellow patch of light illuminate the dark grass in front of the cottage, which let me know that Jess was in her room. The boy’s voice was grave as he spoke, telling me about Jess, that Jess was okay, just a little upset.
That Whitmire boy had gotten fresh with her. Too fresh. Well, the boys drank Wild Turkey in my day too, and that kind of thing is to be expected. Expected, but not tolerated. So I left the boy standing there and marched straight down the walk to speak to Erskine Whitmire, and the good judge did the honorable thing and sent his son packing for a while. The boy turned out just fine too, went to law school and married a girl from the Belvedere.
I went to bed that night perfectly peaceful, feeling I had taken care of the matter, and sure that the Whitmire boy wouldn’t bother Jess, poor lamb, again that summer.
But the next morning, I awoke heavy with dread. When my eyes opened, I lay rigid, staring at the grooves in the pine ceiling. Never
before or since have I felt more like a stray thread was about to be pulled; that I would see my whole life unraveled before me.
The young man whom I had seen the night before—it was Thomas Cleves’s grandson.
Of course, I knew that Treetops was still in his family. From time to time, I’d hear it referred to as the Painter cottage. That cottage was not formally part of the Wequetona Club. In the early days, the Cleveses used to come over for Vespers. They were friends of the Addisons. But as time went on, those early ties were lost. The elder Cleveses had both passed on not long after the summer of 1922. People said that Thomas had sold his share of the cottage to his brother. Quite frankly, I did not want to know about it.
You can never imagine how I weighed my words the next morning when Jess came down for breakfast. I was churning up inside like a young girl in love, but it’s funny being old—most of the time that dried-up husk of a self you carry around with you is all anyone sees.
I took a good, hard look at Jess. She looked the same as usual, wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt, her clean hair pulled back in a ponytail. She did not speak but went straight to the toaster to fix herself some toast. My mind was flitting anxiously over what I should say to her. How do you begin with a fresh-faced girl to talk about anything that matters . . . and where to begin?
I had in mind that I would convey some sympathy to her, stepped forward, but I felt her body stiffen at my slightest touch. How do you tell a young girl: I was once young too, and I know what it is to be female? Jess, as usual, was cool as a cucumber, and I felt inadequate, a foolish old lady faced with an accomplished modern girl, a girl who could do things I could never have imagined, like go to the university and study for medical school.
I did not burden her with my pats and sympathy. I resolved not to say anything. But my secret, after all these years lying dormant, was eating at me, and try as I might, I could not keep my mouth shut. Would it not have been wiser to say nothing? But I was more nervous than wise. Since those fateful days so many years ago, our family had never had any contact with the family of Thomas Cleves. I could not take the risk that Jess would establish a connection with them. I told her to stay away from the Painter boy. Did I in fact drive her toward him? I’ll never know.
