Charlotte’s Story

by Benedict, Laura

  “I’m not mad. I just haven’t understood why you’re not more excited. I loved being pregnant.”

  “That’s fine for you. But listen to this: Jack doesn’t even want me—” she stopped, closing her eyes for a few seconds and taking a deep breath. “Jack doesn’t particularly want me having sex with the baby inside me. How stupid is that? He’s afraid it will know what’s going on, or something.”

  I remember thinking how strange it was that Jack would have that concern, given that he was a doctor. Self-conscious about how many times Press and I had had sex with both of my pregnancies, I didn’t respond.

  “I bet that doesn’t stop Press.” Rachel leaned forward, whispering. “He’s not afraid of anything, is he?”

  “Rachel!”

  She gave me a knowing smile. “Come on. You can tell me.”

  When I wouldn’t tell her what she wanted to know, she launched into a litany of what clothes she would buy once she was back down to what she called a normal size. From there she complained about her mother’s obsession with the baby. I waited, but she never brought up the Heasters. It was as though they had never existed. Nonie had come close to calling Rachel outright selfish many times. I couldn’t, because she was one of the few people I loved and trusted.

  I’d been unable to hold on to the small sense of happiness I’d had in the car, but Rachel’s chatter made it easy for me to just sit and be glad of the sunshine.

  Finally the waitress brought our order, and I moved the subject away from babies and bodily functions.

  “A while ago, I had this idea. It might sound a little crazy.”

  “If you want me to stop you from doing something crazy, you’re talking to the wrong person. You know that.” Rachel took a large, unladylike bite of her club sandwich. Her brandy was gone, and I suspected she was a bit drunk.

  “Well, I read this piece in Harper’s Bazaar about how people are transforming all those big old mansions in New York into more family-friendly houses. You know, modernizing them.”

  “And you want to change Bliss House into apartments?”

  “No. But one family turned a ballroom into a giant playroom. Children can ride bikes inside, or they can use pogo sticks or roller-skate. One ballroom was even big enough to have a bowling alley installed. And, of course, most of them don’t have any windows, so they don’t get broken. I wonder why that is.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t see Press wanting to do that. He’s already redoing the theater, right? I’m not going to be stuck out with the bugs in my barn forever. He promised! And the idea of roller-skating and whatnot in a ballroom—particularly that creepy ballroom—is a little weird, Charlotte. You know Press got himself locked in there for hours once when he was a boy? He never told me what really happened, but it shook him up.”

  Press had told me about being locked in the ballroom, but he’d made it sound like a joke. I didn’t think Rachel knew what she was talking about.

  “Well, it really is partly my ballroom, too.”

  “Maybe.” Rachel sounded doubtful. “What about Olivia? Since she’s come back, don’t you think she’ll be pissed off?” Now she had a look of mischief in her eyes.

  “No, I don’t.” I’d begun to feel that the Olivia I was coming to know probably wouldn’t have minded whatever I wanted to do with the house.

  The café had become more crowded. One of the doubles teams had been seated, and the rest of the patrons looked to have just come off the golf course. It was almost two o’clock. Michael would be going down for his nap. And Eva should be telling Nonie she was too old to nap, that big girls should be allowed to stay up and play.

  We stopped discussing the house and had moved on to town gossip, a much safer topic. Finally, Rachel told me that the Heasters’ nephew had shown up out of the blue with an appraiser, and then movers, to clear out the house.

  “I had no idea. Did you even talk to him?”

  Rachel shook her head. “Press said he talked to him on the telephone, and that he didn’t think he’d be back for the memorial. There’s just something wrong with some families.”

  A pair of shadows fell across the table. “What families?”

  Rachel and I looked up to see Press—in tennis whites, his tan face and arms shining with a thin sheen of perspiration—with a woman standing close beside him.

  He put his hand on my shoulder and kissed the top of my head.

  “What a nice surprise, darling! Ladies, you remember J.C., don’t you?”

  J. C. Jacquith was as tall as I remembered, and skeleton-thin. She was more deeply tanned than even Press and had her chin-length ebony black hair (last time I’d seen her, her hair had been yellow-blonde) pulled back with a white eyelet band that matched the placket on her blouse. Instead of a traditional white tennis skirt, she wore high-waisted shorts that ended only five or six inches down her thin but muscular thighs. Was she ten, perhaps twelve years older than Press? I wasn’t sure. Her nose and lips were patrician-thin, but her eyes—above her precipitous cheekbones—were large, the shocking gold color of a big cat’s.

  “Is there room for us, girls?” J.C.’s drawl was low and slightly nasal. “I’m desperate for a cold drink. Preston ran me ragged during that last set. I think I even perspired a little.” She gave a laugh that might have been meant to be a giggle, but she had no facility for giggling. Her voice was nearly as deep as a man’s.

  Press signaled for the waitress to set two more places at the table, and pulled out the chair closest to him for J.C. to sit down. He also handed her the fine white cardigan that he’d obviously been carrying for her and obliged when she asked him to put it around her shoulders. As exhausted as she said she was, she’d found time to apply a fresh layer of thick, shining red lipstick.

  “All these fans.” She waved a hand toward the ceiling. “I get absolutely chilled. Don’t you?” She was looking at Rachel, who looked back at her with obvious distaste. When Rachel didn’t respond, I jumped in.

  “It’s been very pleasant this afternoon.”

  Rachel’s gaze shifted to Press, who was seating himself in the fourth chair. Finally she spoke.

  “I had no idea you were going to be here, Press, you naughty thing.” She looked at me. “Did you know?”

  I shook my head. No, I hadn’t known.

  Press surprised us all when he turned to me and said “Darling, I told you. You must have forgotten.”

  “You didn’t.” When had he said something? We’d barely spoken in days. “I would have remembered.”

  “There’s no need to get upset, darling. It’s not important.”

  Rachel and J.C. looked at me, each with something dangerously close to pity in their eyes. I wanted to run from the room.

  J.C. laughed, breaking the moment. “I’m just thrilled that I get to see Precious Bride again, Press. You keep her hidden away down at that house of yours. He should let you out more, darling. You’re absolutely delicious.” She was staring at me with those fierce gold eyes, and I suddenly had an image of her biting into me—my arm, my cheek—licking me to tenderize me first, like a real cat with her prey.

  “You know I haven’t been hiding her. We’ve had a difficult few months.” Press lightly touched my hand as if to emphasize the gravity of his words. “By tomorrow afternoon you’ll be down in Old Gate with us.”

  The afternoon had taken a bizarre turn, and I deeply regretted leaving Bliss House. I thought of the security of the morning room, the warm mohair blanket.

  The waitress stood waiting quietly by the table, and we were interrupted for a few moments. Rachel ordered a second drink, but this time just a plain club soda.

  When the waitress was gone, J.C. turned her gaze toward Rachel. Rachel, who was always the center of attention in every room she entered, now looked tiny and insignificant. It was as though she were the moon, and J. C. Jacquith were the sun, which had decided to descend from the sky, flaming everything in its path.

  “We’ve met before, haven’t we?” J
.C. held out her hand to Rachel. “I’m thinking your name is Roberta? Or perhaps Ruth?” She turned to Press and smiled. “You’d think I’d be better with names, wouldn’t you, with my job. I mean, it’s my lifeblood, making sure I remember who people are.” She turned back to Rachel expectantly.

  While I was happy to have the attention drawn away from me, it was a horrible moment.

  Now we were all watching Rachel. Her hands were squeezed into fists on either side of her plate, but her face was unnaturally calm. I knew she was deeply angry.

  “My name is Rachel, you bitch. I’m sure you’ll remember it now.”

  She gave J.C. a toothy, insincere smile, then turned her eyes to Press.

  J.C. had pretended to be wildly amused at Rachel’s response, but the rest of the lunch was tense. Rachel eventually mellowed somewhat, but I made her let me drive back to Old Gate, telling her my stomach was upset and that being a passenger would make it worse. I blamed her behavior on the hormones, but I really felt there was something else going on. She was quiet the whole way home, resting her head against the top of the seat just as I had done earlier with so much pleasure. But there was no pleasure in her face.

  When we reached Bliss House, I asked her to come inside.

  She didn’t answer, but got out of the car and came around to the driver’s-side door. I got out with my packages and stood by as she adjusted herself behind the wheel. When she had the door shut again, she looked up at me. I’d thought her more than a little drunk when we left the hotel, but there in front of the house she seemed dead sober.

  “Don’t be naïve, Charlotte. You know he’s fucking that stick, don’t you?”

  Rachel was prone to cursing, so it wasn’t her coarse language that disturbed me. It was that she’d given voice to my own thoughts. What had Press been doing at The Grange alone with J.C.? Again I saw him settling her sweater across her shoulders. He hadn’t mentioned that he would be seeing her, and he had invited her to the house without consulting me. It all made a sick, strange sort of sense.

  Only once had I ever imagined him unfaithful with another woman. (I found the idea that he might have had some physical knowledge of another man—Jack—so repellent that I had banished it to the darkest recesses of my mind.) And, strangely enough, that woman had been Rachel. But it had been only for that one moment, on the day we’d been introduced, long before I had any claim on him.

  “Don’t be silly. She’s just a friend.” I tried to sound more convinced than I felt.

  “Were you even watching her today?”

  “I don’t know why you’re so worried about her.”

  Rachel’s smile was just short of a sneer. It wasn’t a pretty look for her. “Well, he hasn’t been doing it with you, has he? I bet he’s not.” There was something ugly in her tone that I couldn’t quite identify.

  “Just go home, Rachel. You wouldn’t be saying this if you weren’t tired.” It all felt too real at that moment. Too close. I wanted her to leave.

  “Ah. I didn’t think so.”

  Without another word, she put the car into gear. As she drove away, the Thunderbird’s tires crunching on the driveway, I realized that the emotion I’d heard in her voice sounded a lot like jealousy.

  Chapter 16

  Judgment

  Michael crawled around on the library carpet, alternately playing with a stack of blocks and looking at some of his picture books. Press sat in a chair near the fire, nursing his after-dinner port. He stared into the flames, barely glancing at the old script in his lap. Was he thinking about J.C.? I’d begun to wonder why he hadn’t married her, or at least someone like her. Someone wealthy and independent. I hated how dowdy and insignificant I felt beside her.

  I sat on a floor cushion near Michael, feeling Eva’s absence. This was the time when Eva would sit on Press’s lap and show him pictures she’d drawn during the day, or the things she’d collected on one of her walks with Nonie or me. She worked hard to keep his attention, serious about whatever she was showing him. Many times I’d seen him look past her, distracted, as she nattered on about the animals she’d drawn, the stories she’d made up or adapted from her favorite books. Had he loved her enough? He had wanted children, but sometimes I wondered if he really saw them. While he was occasionally stern, he was never mean. But neither did he play with them. It was as though they were part of his life, part of the house. They were expected.

  I should have known better than to bring up my idea for the ballroom that night. Or any night. While my guilt over Eva’s death colored everything I said or did, at that moment I was irritated about J.C.’s coming visit and the scene at the hotel. I wanted some kind of reaction from Press, some sign that I mattered, that our family mattered.

  It took several minutes to explain what I wanted, and Press watched me carefully and with a strange curiosity in his eyes, as though I were speaking a foreign language that he didn’t quite understand.

  When I finished, he looked over at Michael, who had taken advantage of my inattention and removed a page of one of his books and begun to chew on it. His lips were stained with spots of brown ink.

  “Michael!” I hurriedly swept my finger through his wet mouth to get all the paper out. When I finished, he grinned and said, “Eccccchhhh.”

  Press watched silently while I took care of Michael. When Michael was quiet, I asked him what he thought about my idea.

  He laughed. “Charlotte, you’re talking about a permanent change. There’s no repairing it. It’s a seventy-five-year-old classical ballroom! You have half a dozen other rooms you could turn into a playroom. He has a nursery, and an entire estate to play on.”

  “We don’t even use the ballroom, and the theater will be finished any day.”

  He stopped. “Oh, I see. This is because you’re jealous about the theater?” He shook his head. “Darling, don’t you think that’s a bit immature?”

  A retort about grown adults remodeling an entire theater just to create a more comfortable space in which to waste time came to my lips, but Nonie’s frequent admonition about my picking my battles kept me circumspect.

  “It’s not just about Michael. He’ll have little friends. It would be for them to have a big room to play in when the weather is nasty. And I have so many ideas for how it might look. I’ve missed my art so much, Press.” I had been an art history major in college, but I painted as well. I wasn’t terribly good, but had, at least, sold a couple of pieces to strangers at the senior art fair.

  “I’ll think about it. You can run it by J.C. if you want. See what she thinks should be done with it.” He paused. “But with just one child in the house, it doesn’t really make sense, does it?” He spoke quietly, as though not wanting to point out my error in judgment too forcefully. Anyone watching us would think that he was being tender. With the firelight just beyond him, his eyes were darker than ever. I couldn’t read them, but I didn’t need to.

  I looked down and absently smoothed Michael’s hair where his head rested on my leg. He was contentedly sucking his thumb and reaching out with the other hand to play with the buttons of my cardigan.

  It was a brutal question, and one that I couldn’t answer.

  “Time for you to go on up to Nonie, big guy.” Press rose swiftly from his chair. He wasn’t a particularly lithe man, but his movements were athletic and oddly graceful. Sweeping our sleepy boy from the floor, he perched him on his shoulder.

  “Tell your mama good night.”

  Michael waved, opening and closing his small fist. “Mama.”

  “Good night, darling. Go right to sleep for Nonie.”

  When they were gone, I sat for a moment staring into the fire in the same way Press had. He was right, of course. And he was right to point it out, even if it hurt. I believed I deserved far worse treatment. With tears in my eyes, I picked up the bits of paper from the book’s torn page. Balling the mess in my hand, I tossed it on the burning logs. The paper curled and smoked and quickly turned to blackened ash, indistinguishab
le from the rest of the burnt wood.

  Then I went to the library table where I’d laid the oversize edition of Beatrix Potter stories whose images I had planned to copy and put on the walls. The strange, friendly little community of animals was a perfect bridge from Eva to Michael. Something they both might have loved. I sank down in Press’s chair and turned the pages beneath the warm yellow lamplight.

  I was turning the pages blindly, comforted by their familiarity, when Press came back a few minutes later. Surprised, I closed the book and looked up at him.

  His footsteps dragged a bit. He had probably rowed early in the morning, and then there had been tennis with J.C. at the Racquet Club. I wondered how things were going to be between us. Would he ever really forgive me? He had told me again and again—every time I needed to hear it—that he didn’t blame me for Eva’s death. I couldn’t quite believe him. If the situation had been reversed, if I had come home to find one of our children crying in his crib and the other child drowned in a bathtub, I would not have forgiven him.

  I would have killed him.

  The realization shocked me, but as I watched him going about the room, returning books to the shelves and neatening his papers on the desk, I knew it was true. He had to despise me. It would explain why he would break our marriage vows and seek out the company of another woman.

  Was that why he’d lied about telling me he’d be at the club?

  “Press.”

  “What is it? I’m going to bed.”

  I twisted in my chair to look up at him. “I wanted to ask you why you said you’d told me you were going to be at the club. You never told me that.”

  He frowned, his heavy brows coming together. He ran one hand through his rough hair.

  “Charlotte, I told you this morning.”

  I sat up straighter.