by Doug Burgess
True to their word, the Aunts left few scraps for the appraisers to pick over. An elegant sideboard appears suddenly and mysteriously in Grandma’s dining room, and there is a watercolor of Block Island hanging over my bed. “Oh, stop fussing,” Constance says, waving aside my protests. “Emma would’ve wanted you to have it.” Even Aunt Irene now sports a Fair Isle jumper in green tartan which seems snug on her large frame.
The Aunts come by most nights to keep Grandma company, and give me a chance to rest. They play bridge around the baize-topped table in the study. Emma’s hand is a dummy, but her green eyeshade still rests next to it. I’ve never offered to take the empty chair, and they’ve never asked. Sometimes Aunt Irene will read interesting bits from the paper, most of which I read on my iPhone hours before. But it passes the time.
On an otherwise unremarkable Wednesday the post arrives with a letter from Xavier College, formally terminating my employment as an assistant professor “for reasons which are well known to all concerned.” Irene and Constance must have sensed something in the air, for that night they are more solicitous than usual. Irene brings a gigantic Victoria sponge cake lined with homemade raspberry jam, and even Aunt Constance unbends enough to ask my opinion on the refugee crisis in Syria. Grandma eats her cake and focuses on her hand. Somehow, with most of the wires in her head lying in a tangled heap, she can still play bridge. But her conversation is desultory.
The fourth hand ends in a spectacular grand slam for Aunt Constance, and by common instinct all three women look to the television. “It’s nearly ten,” Irene says, wolfishly.
“Who’s got the remote?” Constance demands.
“Right here.” Grandma fumbles with the slippery plastic, points and shoots.
“I really don’t know what you see in him,” I offer. “He’s not even that good-looking.”
“Shut up,” all three chime in unison.
“Blue Bloods will not be shown tonight so that we can bring you a special report from our correspondent at the capital, where we have the latest on the Plundergate scandal that has already implicated…”
“For God’s sake, turn it off,” growls Constance, disgusted.
“Another week without Tom,” Irene sighs. “If this Plundergate lasts much longer, I may lose my will to live.”
Such is the rigid order of our lives that the postponement of a single program has thrown the entire Wednesday askew. We stare at each other. “Well,” Grandma asks of the room, “what now?”
“Oh!” cries Irene suddenly. “I have an idea!” She jumps up from the table and disappears. A moment later she is back, holding something black and plastic with a cord dangling down behind. “Meant to give this to you days ago,” she tells me.
It is a tape recorder as big as a shoebox. “Thanks?” I tell her, puzzled.
“It’s for you to record us,” Irene says mystifyingly. “You know, like those Israelis did with the Holocaust—like that!”
I am not even one half-step ahead of her. “You want me to make you talk about the Holocaust?”
“No, silly. Oral history. We tell stories, talk about our lives, whatever we remember. And you record it all. Because, let’s face it, in a few years we’ll be gone, and this whole place will just be one giant condo project.”
“And because some of us may forget things soon,” Aunt Constance puts in.
“You mean me,” says Grandma.
“I mean you.”
I’m beginning to understand. The Laughing Sarahs have been conferencing. The subject is me. I’ve lost my job and I’m back living in a town I told to fuck itself about six years ago. In my grandmother’s house, no less. Where my own father won’t visit. So, they asked themselves, what can we do to keep David from getting bored, restless—even…suicidal? Yeah, they remember that, too. A quick trip to Newport General when I was sixteen, complete with twist-tie restraints pinning down my arms. Dad was in Guam. Fun times.
But I have to say, their solution has a manic kind of brilliance. Give him a project! Us! “This could be fun,” I admit. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Well, you’re the one with the PhD in history, Smartypants,” Constance answers snappily. “What do you want us to talk about?”
The giant tape recorder sitting on the table seems to ask the same question. Where to begin? Whose story do you want to hear? Should we talk about rationing during the war? Or Aunt Constance’s second husband Edgar, who took acid in the ’60’s and now believes he’s the Shah of Iran?
“Tell me something about Emma.”
There is a collective intake of breath, felt rather than heard.
“What do you want to know?” Constance demands. “She lived over in that little house for fifty years. Then she died. You know as much as we do.”
“Not everything. You went through Emma’s things. Did you find the letters?”
“Letters?” Constance repeats, all innocence. “What letters?”
“The letters that kept coming for fifty years,” I say doggedly. “Teddy Johnson’s letters. The ones you said you’d never tell me about as long as she was alive.”
“Oh those letters. No, we didn’t find them. Just bills and circulars.” She stares into the fire as if trying to read a message in the coals.
“I’m going to take Maggie up,” Irene announces. She takes Grandma firmly by the hand. “Say goodnight to the folks, Gracie.”
“Goodnight to the folks, Gracie!” Grandma mimics, grinning. Half the time she doesn’t know who I am, but she can remember a Burns and Allen skit from 1935. They disappear up the stairs together.
“I don’t believe you,” I tell Aunt Constance quietly.
“Can’t help that. Anyway, what are you bothering about those letters for? It’s all over and done with.”
“Are you sure? What if she was killed because of something in her past?”
“Oh, please. This is Rhode Island, not the Moulin Rouge. Emma didn’t have a past. She got old, and died.”
“She didn’t die, Constance. She was murdered.”
A voice from above our heads calls gently, “I think David is right, Connie. He deserves to know.” Irene comes down the stairs, leaning heavily on the banister.
Constance grimaces at this new betrayal. “We were there, Irene. It was all just a stupid love affair that fizzled out.”
“Not before producing a kid, apparently,” I put in.
“I didn’t know about the daughter,” Constance answers. “Emma went abroad for a while. She must have had the baby then. But she didn’t come back with it. So if she didn’t tell us, chances are she never told Teddy.”
“Pretty rough on him.”
“He was pretty rough on her. Never came back, did he? Never claimed his bastard.”
“Connie…” Irene is distressed.
“No, I mean it. I’m telling you the truth, David. We didn’t find the letters. I don’t know what they said, and I don’t care.”
“You still haven’t told me about them,” I remind her gently.
Aunt Constance looks at me for a moment, shrugs, and walks over to the bookshelf. For one mad moment I think she is actually going to produce the letters themselves. Instead she comes back with a box of scrapbooks. “We took these out of her house that night,” she says. “Here.” She chooses one, flips it open and shows it to me.
Three girls in bathing suits pose alluringly on the hood of a Pontiac convertible. My grandmother’s hair is long and straight, pulled into a braid. Aunt Irene is already slightly plump, with a cheeky grin. The third figure is Aunt Emma, draped over the radiator grill. She is by far the most beautiful: heart-shaped face, almond eyes, and a long willowy figure like Catherine Hepburn. Her hair is wet and serpentine around her shoulders. The date on the picture is 1950.
“That’s Teddy behind the wheel,” Aunt Irene tells me.
It must be summer, because Teddy is shirtless. His muscled bicep is folded casually on the doorframe, hand resting on the wheel. Thick, blond hair is pulled back from a razor-straight scalp. He has dark eyes with long, almost feminine lashes, and very white teeth.
“Wow,” I say.
“Yeah, that was Teddy,” Aunt Constance sighs. Her lips form a thin line.
“He was so handsome,” Irene sighs, “Movie star handsome, like Cesar Romero, but not Italian.”
“Cuban,” Aunt Constance corrects.
“Teddy most certainly was not Cuban!” Irene snaps back.
Constance opens her mouth, closes it again. “Well, anyway, you get the idea.”
“But how did it all start?” I press. “And why did they never marry? What happened to him, anyway?”
“What makes you so sure this has anything to do with her death?”
“What makes you sure it doesn’t?” I retort.
Aunt Constance considers this for a moment. “Fuck it,” she says finally. “I’m headed home. Irene, you can do the honors.” She makes it as far as the door before turning round. “But remember this,” she says, pointing an accusing finger at both of us, “Emma was a damn good woman, and the only thing she ever asked for was privacy. If she had secrets, they were hers and hers alone.” With that, she turns and marches out the door.
Irene, admonished but unrepentant, cuts herself another slice of Victoria sponge. “Connie’s always so forceful. I always said she’d make a splendid Baptist preacher, the hard-shell kind. But her people were Episcopalians.”
“About the letters…?” I prod.
“Oh, it’s such a beautiful story! But Connie is right, love, it can’t have anything to do with Emma’s death.”
“You said…”
“I said I think you should know. But not because of…all this. It’s not like that. I don’t think Emma would’ve minded you knowing, not now anyway. And after all, it’s just another old New England fairy tale.”
I chuckle. Most New England fairy tales end with a pirate ship preying for souls or a ghost dragging its chains along a deserted beach. “Tell me.”
“The first thing you need to know,” Irene begins, fortifying herself with a sip of coffee, “is that Emma’s family had money.” Her voice, so like Grandma’s with every Yankee vowel flattened as though by a clothes mangle, carries me back into the past—mine, not Emma’s. I’m five years old, sitting on Grandma’s lap and enveloped in a world where anything can happen, and magic is real.
IRENE
The first thing you need to know is that Emma’s family had money. And with money came expectations. They couldn’t just marry their daughter off to some car mechanic or office boy, not in 1951. Her people came from Newport around the time of the Depression. Everyone whispered that they were ‘old money,’ but nobody really knew where it came from. Like those Spanish doubloons that sit for so long at the bottom of the sea that all their markings wear away—that was the Godfrey fortune.
But maybe, just maybe, they weren’t quite as rich as everyone thought. Why else would they give up Newport for Little Compton? We didn’t even have a theater back then. And the Godfreys weren’t what you might call big spenders, either. Kept a hired girl for the house and gardener for the grounds, but a place like that really needed a whole staff. Old Mr. Godfrey was a bit on the cheap side. There’s a story that he used to give his wife a bushel of peaches for her birthday every year—because he fancied peach jam! So there she’d be on the front porch, mashing away at his peaches, for days. She was a nice woman—rather faded looking, but nice. He was a bastard.
I think they both put their hopes in Emma. A family that’s lost its fortune can still trade on its name for a while, if they have enough ready cash to keep up appearances. All Emma had to do was marry well, and they’d be flush again. So the Godfreys sent Emma to Lincoln School and made sure she went to all the debutante dances at Pawtuxet Hall, where the boys from the prep schools came down to mingle with the townies. They sent her on expensive trips to Europe, and Mrs. Godfrey would scan the passenger lists on sailing day and tell Emma exactly who to sit next to, who to talk to. She never lacked for nice clothes, either, and when she was sixteen her father gave her a convertible—that same one in the picture. In fact that was the day we took the picture: July 17, 1950. The day we first met Teddy.
Teddy? Oh, he wasn’t what they had in mind at all. He was a local boy, and his father ran the tuna boat Trixie Gale out of Galilee. Nice people, the Johnsons. They were dead by then, though; Teddy was an orphan. And Teddy was—well, you saw him. Teddy was gorgeous. They met at Bailey’s Beach. Emma went too far out that day, she was always doing that. Showing off a little. Not to make us feel bad, you understand, but just because I think she always felt a little bit apart. Her parents didn’t like her going to the beach, showing her legs. They were scared she’d get too brown and look like a farmhand. Plus there was a low crowd around Bailey’s Beach—low by Godfrey standards, anyway. “Not quite nice,” was how Mrs. Godfrey described it. But it was a fizzing hot day, and it was Emma’s birthday, so she did as she damn well pleased. We filled up a hamper with jam puffs and lemonade and parked right on the sand. You could do things like that back then, nobody cared.
But Emma, as I said, went too far out. You remember we always told you to wait an hour after lunch before swimming? And you thought that was just your old aunties being silly? It wasn’t. Emma got in the water and rather fancied swimming out to Bishop Rock. It was a flat calm day and the rock looked ever so close. So she started to swim. It was all right at first, and there in the water Emma felt far away from her family, and very clever. But then she got a pretty far ways out and realized the rock wasn’t as close as she thought. Too late to turn back. Best to just make it to the rock and rest there for a bit.
We were watching from shore. She looked okay. I even saw her wave to us, and like a fool I waved back. She kept waving, and I remember Maxine saying, “Isn’t she silly, waving like that? She needs her energy to swim.” It was Constance who finally realized what was going on. “She’s drowning!” she cried, and began running towards the water.
But the lifeguard had seen Emma too. He threw himself into an oncoming wave and made for her, great brown arms cutting through the water. By now the whole beach was watching. When he reached her they gave a great cheer, and did it again when he finally came ashore, carrying her.
It was Teddy, of course. He looked like Poseidon that day, seawater glistening on his perfect chest with his hair all tousled and damp. He laid Emma across the backseat of the Pontiac and gave her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. That’s what it looked like, anyway. But I’m pretty sure she was awake by then. Didn’t seem to mind, though. When he was sure she was all right, Teddy offered to drive us home. Emma was the only one with a license, so we said yes. He drove right up the driveway to your Grandma’s house and that’s where the picture was taken.
Oh, yes, Emma was fine. Sometimes I wonder if she staged the whole thing, got out there in the water and started splashing around until he noticed. She did things like that. But then I remember how frightened she looked, how her hair was tangled with seaweed and her makeup all smeared, and I think, Who’d want to meet their future love like that? So I just don’t know. I reckon it doesn’t matter anyway. She met him, that’s the main thing, and after that day he started coming over regular. To check on her, he said. Well that’s one way to put it.
Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey weren’t at all pleased. They were indebted to him for saving her life, of course, but those kind of debts don’t run very long. When Teddy came a third time, with a bouquet of geraniums from his own garden, Mrs. Godfrey greeted him with a cold smile and Mr. Godfrey suggested he might enjoy a walk back to the barn. Once they got there Mr. Godfrey sat him on a bale of hay and began explaining certain facts. The Godfreys were an old and venerable family. They had social position. They remained extre
mely grateful for the young man’s heroic actions, but now that Emma was fully recovered, his attentions were no longer appropriate.
Now I only have Emma’s version of this story, so you’ll have to take her word on what happened next. According to Emma, Teddy Johnson waited until Mr. Godfrey ran out of steam. Then he drew a checkbook out from his back pocket and said, “How much?”
“I don’t understand,” said Mr. Godfrey.
“I think you do,” Teddy answered. “You say your daughter has certain expectations. I figure that means money. Well, it’s a hard world, and I don’t blame her, or you. So if I need to pay a premium to take her out to the movies, I’d rather just pay it now. Up front. What figure did you have in mind?”
Mr. Godfrey looked very offended. “I think you need to leave now,” he said coldly.
Teddy looked at him for a moment, then back at the house with its peeling paint and sagging porch. He wrote a number on the check, tore it off and handed it to Godfrey. “That about cover it?”
I guess it must have done, because Old Man Godfrey never said a word after that. Teddy really was wonderful. He courted Emma in a gentle manner that was old-fashioned even then, brought her flowers and candy, sat with her parents in the front parlor, played backgammon with them. He gave them all gifts. Not expensive, flashy gifts, but thoughtful ones. Emma got a fan, her mother a tortoiseshell comb, her father a leather saddle for his favorite horse. Mr. Godfrey liked the saddle (he sold it to Bud Timmons for three hundred dollars) but he wondered how to hurry things along. I’m just guessing here, but maybe he figured the family coffers might not survive Teddy’s unhurried courtship. Finally he chose a warm September day to invite the lad into his study for a chat. Mr. Godfrey gave Teddy a glass of port wine, told him to sit down and asked what his intentions were with Emma.
