I almost tripped on a framed photograph that had fallen, face down, onto the carpet in front of the commode table that held Olivia’s two mahogany jewelry caskets.
I picked it up, but had to take it to the window to get a better look because it was so faded. It had always been on the table, but I had never looked at it closely.
A very young Olivia sat in a wicker chair in the garden, with her husband, Michael Searle Bliss, who looked even younger, standing beside her. His slender hand rested tentatively on her shoulder. He seemed uncomfortable, perhaps too hot in his stiff collar and three-piece suit. His cheeks wore a residue of pink that was visible even in the faded colors of the photograph. (That it was in color was a kind of miracle in itself. It must have cost a small fortune to have it done.) Olivia’s simple ankle-length dress of yellow, flower-patterned silk, was fresh and contemporary for its time, though the large black bow at the waist gave it a playful look that wouldn’t at all have suited the conservative, sophisticated woman I’d known. But it worked for the girl with the attentive eyes and plain features in the photo. The camera’s distance made her scar seem insignificant.
They were an interesting couple. It was difficult to imagine Olivia being so young, and even stranger to know that her husband would be dead before they were married a year. He didn’t look old enough to be married at all, and his mild features—high cheekbones, sloping shoulders, and slight limbs—had little in common with my husband’s. Their coloring was the same, and the thickness of the eyebrows was something like Press’s, but the resemblance ended there. The family resemblance was slightly stronger when I compared Press to his father’s portrait hanging in the library.
I replaced the photograph between the jewelry boxes, which were full to overflowing. Many of her more extravagant pieces were horn or antique platinum or yellow gold. Intricate Art Nouveau pins and necklaces with flower and scroll motifs. Fanciful enamel and jeweled birds, insects, and animals that had a whimsy about them that seemed unlike Olivia.
As I suspected, there were several peacock-themed pieces, including an enameled white jeweled peacock with a clasp that, when opened, released a small and very sharp gold blade. It surprised me, but I wasn’t hurt, and I made a mental note to put it up somewhere that Michael couldn’t reach it. The largest piece was a vibrant blue male peacock with a citrine crown, his tail tapered, not fanned. His head was in profile so that only one gold-rimmed eye was visible, and that was a single dark emerald that had the winking clarity of a diamond. The brooch was both ugly and curiously attractive at the same time. Thinking it might be a conversation piece that would look good on my fall coat, I slipped it into my pocket, feeling a bit like a thief.
Looking at the jewelry, I realized I had no idea what to do with it all. I had both my mother’s and my own simple jewelry, which, along with Olivia’s, would have eventually gone to Eva. Press had a cousin who lived in the area; yet, although he was a Bliss, he and Press weren’t close. But the cousin did have a young daughter, Jane, who should probably receive some of Olivia’s things. I closed the caskets. Where once I had marveled at their contents, now those contents weighed on me as though they were a part of some dragon’s cursed hoard. I would deal with them later.
Perhaps it was my own laziness or the fact that I was already overwhelmed, but I decided to tell Marlene that she could have whatever clothes of Olivia’s she wanted, and that she should pack the rest and have Terrance take them to the thrift store. I wondered who I would later see in Olivia’s clothes. I did set aside Olivia’s many lovely hand-tatted lace and fine linen handkerchiefs. She had collected them since she was a girl, and she was especially proud of them. They had been among the first things she’d taken time to show me after I moved into the house, and she had insisted that I borrow one of the oldest and most fragile to carry on my wedding day.
Press might have thought differently, but as far as I was concerned, everything else in the room could stay exactly as it was for all time. But I decided that the door should remain open. I didn’t want to be afraid of it anymore.
Thus emboldened, I went through the narrow door connecting the bedroom to Olivia’s morning room.
Unlike the bedroom, the morning room wasn’t crowded with bric-a-brac, but it had plenty of furniture. A pair of chairs and a low table in front of the fireplace, a large writing desk and another chair, a couple of tables along the walls, and a chaise longue in front of the windows, with another small table and a floor lamp beside it. While there was plenty of furniture, Olivia hadn’t entertained much in this room. Only her closest friends ever saw it.
The walls were covered, from the chair railing to the ceiling, with paintings of children. Most were reproductions of quite famous works: Leighton’s strange and dignified May Sartoris, Bouguereau’s Temptation, Renoir’s Young Girl with Parasol, and his Mlle Irène Cahen d’Anvers. Mary Cassatt’s Young Girl at a Window was the most poignant. Despite the 19th-century dress, the girl, so serious and intent, reminded me of the Olivia in the photograph. This was how Olivia might have looked as a pensive teenage girl, unaware that she would be the sole mistress of Bliss House for nearly her entire adult life. What would her thoughts have been?
What had mine been, coming to Bliss House? I hadn’t imagined that Olivia would die before she was even sixty years old and that I would be in her morning room without her.
I avoided the neat desk with its bulging letter holder. She’d suddenly taken to her bed in the days just before she died, refusing to let anyone be with her except Terrance and Marlene. Press had told me not to worry, that she very occasionally had spells when she retired completely to her room, but that it hadn’t happened in a long time. Jack confided that he thought she’d become too dependent on the chloral hydrate drops her elderly internist had prescribed for her occasional sleeplessness and might have begun to mix them with alcohol. But no one even whispered the word “suicide.” It had been a terrible accident, Jack and the internist assured us. To spare the family any public embarrassment, her death had been recorded as simple cardiac arrest. It was, the internist said, what had certainly killed her in the end.
That it had been an accident was what I chose to believe. Olivia wasn’t a moody, unpredictable sort of person. And I could never have faced the knowledge that both my children’s grandmothers had been selfish enough to commit suicide.
Beneath the watchful eyes of all those children, I opened the door to the room’s single enormous closet. I felt around for a light switch, but there was only a dangling beaded chain attached to an exposed bulb.
The naked light was harsh, the closet as big as one of the bedrooms in the servants’ area at the back of the house. All three walls were lined with crowded but neatly ordered shelves. Close by was a row of china-faced dolls in old-fashioned dresses, and a toy monkey with movable limbs and wide, mischievous eyes. Curious, I touched its fur, but drew my hand back quickly. The fur was real. I shuddered. The dolls were less alarming; but, wary now, I did not touch their hair. Other shelves contained dishes and baskets, and stacks of framed embroidered samplers with traditional aphorisms and bible quotes. The stitching was careful but not practiced. I wondered if Olivia had done them herself as a girl. I knew no needle arts. Rachel’s mother had taught her to smock, and she was always at work on some project.
I had to stand on tiptoe to get a better look at what was on the top shelf, and then wished I hadn’t.
Even with the glare from the bulb, I could see what the dusty, glass-domed display cases arranged there held: lifelike arrangements of taxidermy birds—a juvenile owl, finches, bluebirds, a woodpecker, butterflies and moths, and the delicate skeleton of what had probably been a tiny monkey (it appeared to be eating a crab).
I was both fascinated and disgusted. But there was nothing here that needed to be immediately gotten rid of. Had the taxidermy animals belonged to Olivia? Perhaps they had been here even before she arrived.
Below the dolls on a lower shelf was a row of wooden boxes labeled with
ranges of letters: A–F, G–L, M–R, S–V, W–Z. Sliding out the S–V from its place, I found that it contained rows of heavy glass slides. I had used slide projectors in college, but these slides were much larger and thicker. Holding one to the light, I saw an 18th-century sailing ship that tilted in the water as though it were sinking. There were several more of ships—some in color, some in black and white. But after the ships, I pulled out several more of snakes—a cobra in a pen, a black snake like an ebony “S” separating a plot of vibrant, painted green grass. I might have stayed there all day, holding the curious slides up to the light, examining one after the other. They were obviously quite old and were like tiny windows into the past. I had no projector on which to show them right now, but they were here, waiting for me, any time I wanted to look. When Michael was a little older, I was sure he would like them too. I returned the box to the shelf.
Satisfied that I hadn’t missed anything critical, I had almost turned to leave when I noticed a large covered object on the floor at the opposite end of the closet. Given the taxidermy creatures and the dolls, I might have been afraid to approach it, but the heavy drape was tailored and the thing beneath seemed to have geometric proportions rather than organic.
I touched it, and a feeling of warmth swept over me as though the drape hid some sort of heater. Before I could pull off the cover, I heard a shout from outside the room. Leaving the light on and the closet door behind me open, I ran from the morning room and into the bedroom and out. Below me, Nonie was hurrying up the stairs, calling Michael’s name. Across the gallery, Michael had worked his arm and shoulder into the narrow space between two of the gallery uprights and had nearly worked his head through. Covering my mouth to keep from screaming at him and scaring him, I ran past the staircase and past Nonie, who was running up the stairs, puffing heavily.
Michael seemed not to notice either of us, and gave a start when I grabbed him. Perhaps I hurt him when I jerked him from between the uprights, because he began to scream and pound at me, pushing me away as I tried to hold on to him. His body was damp with sweat and exertion. He’d been trying very hard to get through the uprights, having no understanding that success would have meant certain death for him. I looked down into the hall where Marlene and Terrance stared up at us. When Nonie reached me, she stood, breathless, holding on to the railing for support. I didn’t want to look at her face, knowing I would see blame there. Justified blame.
After Michael was calm, I took him downstairs and gave him a late breakfast. Within fifteen minutes, he was happily smearing oatmeal on his high-chair tray, laughing. I kept him close to me the rest of the morning.
Chapter 8
Confidences
Rachel and I sat in big wicker chairs on the screened porch of the 18th-century farmhouse she shared with Jack. It was one of the oldest houses in the county, built not long after Old Gate was officially established as a town. Ignoring pleas from her mother, as well as the Old Gate Historical Society, Rachel had insisted on building onto its original 1,200 square feet, adding a spacious sunny kitchen and sitting room, two more bedrooms, and a long porch along the back. But it had been well done. Jack had gone along with the build as he did with everything that Rachel wanted. He was too busy in his medical practice to object too much.
Beyond the porch, a simple garden with a winding path sloped downward to meet the rest of the property. It was too shaded for roses, but there were now-spent rhododendrons and hydrangeas, holly bushes—almost trees, really—and some lemon balm. Beds of harebells, wild bleeding hearts, and hostas of all sizes hugged the path. Rachel’s mother, Holly, had crowded beds of giant hostas in her yard and was always dividing and giving them away. Beyond the garden, the path led to a sizable pond half-surrounded by cattails and weedy yellow brush gone to seed. The pond was stocked with bass, though Jack had little time to fish, and had a small flock of white geese that lived there year-round. The path then wandered out to the barn, which had been roughly renovated to accommodate the theater group and the occasional large party.
With her basket of smocking notions beside her chair, and a square of bright green fabric on her lap, Rachel looked relaxed and content in her sleeveless purple maternity blouse over a smart black cotton sateen skirt. As always, she was in full makeup, but her hair was pulled into a ponytail as though she were still a teenager. She looked oddly innocent, for Rachel.
In college she’d been a troublemaker, sneaking out for dates, smoking in our dorm room. She hadn’t cared. As long as she was having fun, anything was okay with her. After she and Jack married, she calmed considerably. She still loved to throw parties, though she complained that—outside of the theater group—Old Gate was full of boring people who did boring things. I hoped the baby she was carrying would satisfy her need for activity.
I’d come, as Press had suggested, to see how she was doing. As selfish as Rachel was (I loved her but had no illusions about her ideas of her own importance), even she could not have expected me to visit any sooner after Eva’s death. I sympathized with her, though. She was probably lonesome, just waiting for the baby to come.
It had been hard to leave Michael after the incident with the railing. But God knew he was safer alone with Nonie than he was with me. Early in the afternoon, as he was about to go down for his nap, I’d wanted to lie down on Eva’s trundle bed until he fell asleep, but Nonie had taken my arm and led me quietly out of the nursery.
“You don’t want to suffocate him, Lottie. Go and visit Rachel the way you planned. Stay as long as you like. I’ll watch him.”
What went unspoken was that I was the one who hadn’t been watching that morning.
A light rain was falling, dropping through the nearby trees like quiet music. Somewhere beneath the fallen leaves, a lone, late-in-the-season cricket chirruped for a mate. There was nothing odd or frightening about the farmhouse. No local legends of ghosts. No unexplained deaths. Even though I was used to Bliss House, I was comfortable here, which was probably why I felt relaxed enough to tell Rachel about seeing Olivia the day of Eva’s funeral. I had to tell someone, and I couldn’t tell Nonie. She would’ve made me lie down until the notion passed.
“You poor baby. How frightening.” Rachel touched my hand after I’d told her everything. If she noticed that it was trembling slightly, she didn’t say. Behind us in the kitchen, I could hear her new housekeeper, Sarah, readying the tea tray.
“You told Press, didn’t you? What did he say?”
“Of course I didn’t tell him. He’d think I was insane. Rachel, you know I wouldn’t make something like that up, don’t you? You can’t tell him I told you, either.”
Rachel shook her head.
“I’ve said a hundred times that house is haunted, silly. And how like Olivia to keep hanging around. The old. . . .” She caught herself and gave me a wicked little smirk. “What are you going to do?” Then her face changed and she put her hand to her belly. “The beast is kicking again. Such a little stinker already. Jack’s sure it’s a girl, but I told him I heard that intelligent men father girls. So, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be a boy, right?” She laughed, amused by her own joke. “Want to feel?”
That was Rachel. Impulsive. Playfully cruel. Maybe she was being genuine, but I was still sensitive because of Eva. I didn’t know what I would do if she gave birth to a baby girl just weeks after Eva’s death. The thought sickened me.
“No. I—”
Before I could finish, she grabbed my hand and laid it on the swell of her stomach. She watched my face expectantly as though waiting for me to comment on a fabulous new hat or pair of shoes she’d just purchased.
Beneath the fabric of her blouse, I felt the rolling pressure of a shoulder or knee of the baby as it squirmed in her womb. She was due within weeks, and the baby was stunningly active, given how large it was inside her. At the same point in both of my pregnancies, my children had been still for such long periods that I’d lain awake at night, alert for any kind of movement and fearful that they
had died. Press had humored me, putting his face against my naked belly, listening. Telling me he felt and heard things that I suspected he really hadn’t.
I nodded and tried a smile. Rachel was satisfied.
“Do you want me to come over and scare Olivia away? Or we could do an exorcism. You’ve got Father Aaron. Don’t priests do that sort of thing?”
“Please don’t be mean. I shouldn’t have told you. You must think I’m an idiot.”
“You know how Olivia was about me. She thought all Jews stole babies and ate them or something.”
I objected, even though I knew she wasn’t far from wrong. I hadn’t known Olivia before World War II, but the inhuman treatment of the German and Polish Jews in the war obviously hadn’t made any kind of impression on her. Sensible about so many things, she was shamelessly anti-Semitic.
“She was old-fashioned. But I never heard her say one unpleasant thing about you.”
Rachel made a scoffing sound. Then she turned in her chair to call into the house.
“Sarah. Where’s that tea? And bring out some of those ladyfingers you baked this morning.”
Sarah was new because Rachel didn’t keep housekeepers long. I assumed she wore them out with her demands. It never occurred to me then that some of them might not want to work for her because of her Jewish background. Jack wasn’t Jewish, or any other faith that I knew of. I wondered how they would raise the baby, but I didn’t ask.
Charlotte’s Story Page 6
