As I studied it, a tiny man, dark hair slicked back, stepped out from a row of armoires. He held a handkerchief and paused to sneeze before greeting me.
“May I be of assistance?” he asked between sniffles.
“I’m wondering if Elaine and Glennifer are still proprietors here?” I asked, knowing only death would have had the power to remove them.
The tiny man rolled his eyeballs upward. “Although I am certain they’ll outlive me, it’s my dream that someday they’ll be gone, giving me a chance to make sense of all of this.”
“Willy,” a voice called out, “we can plainly hear you.”
He rolled his eyeballs again and pointed me toward the back and the source of the voice.
“Make sense of this? It would take another lifetime to accomplish that,” I said.
“We heard that too,” another voice said, similar to the first.
I smiled and headed to the voices.
**
At the back of the store, two old women sat at a large desk, facing each other over piles of paper and magazines. Each wore black, heel to collar. Each held her piled, gray hair in place with a fine white netting. They both turned to face me, their dark shiny eyes sunk deep in wrinkles.
“Good morning,” I said.
Elaine and Glennifer were spinster twins, institutions
of Charleston, notorious for their love of gossip. Making discreet offers to purchase furniture from Charleston blue bloods desperate to pay taxes or bank loans, they’d made a fortune on the knowledge gained by this gossip. While I hoped to exploit their delight in that gossip, I was genuinely glad to see them again. My mother had often brought me here, not to shop, but to educate me on the styles of furniture, as if we were touring a museum. Because she could not afford to, not once had my mother purchased anything in this shop, but the sisters, like all who met my mother, had delighted in her presence and encouraged her visits, despite the fact that she had not been born into Charleston’s elite. I remembered, too, how kindly they had treated me.
“I wonder if you might recognize me,” I said. “Try to picture me much younger. No beard.”
The two old women stared closely at me, then, in the same moment, swiveled their heads toward each other.
“It’s—,” Elaine began.
“Nicholas Barrett,” Glennifer finished.
“Exactly,” Elaine said. “Oh, my.”
“Oh, my is right,” Glennifer said. “Nick Barrett. Back in Charleston.”
“Curiosity aroused, ladies?” I asked.
“Of course, of course,” Elaine said. “Find a chair and set. Tell us all. Where have you been since that horrible accident? It was such a terrible thing.”
“Oh yes,” Glennifer agreed. “Ghastly. Absolutely ghastly. We heard rumors . . .”
They hoped I would fill in the silence; I hoped they could fill in some blanks.
I had not gone far to get my chair. Instead of sitting as requested, I whistled at the amount on the price tag, knowing it would get another rise from them.
“Louis XIV, young man,” Glennifer sniffed. “I believe your mother would have taught you its worth. Surely your absence from Charleston did not rob you of southern refinement.”
“There are those who would argue that refinement was not part of my breeding,” I said. “Something I intend to disprove over the next few days.”
Glennifer clapped her hands with glee. “Tell all. Do tell all!”
I decided, having offered the bait, that enough had been taken and that the hook could be securely set. “Not another word. Yet. I’m here to bargain.”
“Bargain?” Elaine said, wrinkling her nose. “In this shop, we do not bargain. Do we, Glenny?”
“Certainly not.” Glennifer giggled. “We negotiate.”
“Let me begin, then,” I said. “I can confirm or deny any multitude of rumors. But not until you give me some information that surely you two must know.”
“He’s flattering us, Glenny. Beware.”
“Hush. We haven’t had this kind of excitement in weeks. Absolute weeks.”
“Helen deMarionne,” I said. The letter that had brought me to Charleston contained an enigmatic phrase.
Ask Helen deMarionne the truth. She knew your mother best.
Since I had the day ahead of me before returning to the deMarionne mansion, I would take this opportunity to learn what I could. “Surely you must remember when she first arrived in Charleston. I’d like to know about her.”
Whatever gossip had been spoken about Helen deMarionne would never have reached me when I was a boy. Children are too far removed from the adult world to have enough perspective to understand them, except in the way that a child looks upward, in affection or fear, love or distrust. I knew nothing about Helen, and here was the best place to start.
Again, their heads swiveled in the same direction toward me at the same time.
“Helen deMarionne! Oh, my. It’s true then? You did marry Claire, didn’t you? We have wondered all these years and never truly confirmed it.”
Despite all the pain held in that statement, I laughed at their girlish eagerness. “Ladies. You tell all. When I am able, I tell all. That’s my trade.”
“When you are able?” Glennifer glared. “And when might that be?”
“A couple days.” I didn’t expect to be in Charleston much longer. Whoever had sent for me had paid for five nights at the inn.
“That doesn’t seem like much of a trade to me.” This from Glennifer.
“Oh, Glenny, what does it matter? As you said, we haven’t had this kind of excitement in weeks. To imagine that Nick Barrett has returned. Don’t you remember the rumors . . . ?”
“Ladies,” I said, “Helen deMarionne.”
I wanted their memories of her. And would not, at this point, share mine. Especially of the last time that Helen deMarionne and I had had a conversation.
**
It had happened in the hospital, as I recovered from the emergency surgery following the car accident. A bright young intern had sawed off my right leg just below the knee.
My first visitor that day had been Police Chief Edgar Layton, who interrogated me about the accident. An hour had passed after his departure, an hour in which I merely stared at the ceiling.
My leg pained me greatly; if I wished, I could ring the bell and a nurse would bring me morphine. My thirst tormented me; I had not reached for the pitcher near my bed to refill the empty glass on the bedside table. I had not even shifted in that hour. Because of what Layton had said to me, the emptiness of my future had drained my soul so totally that
I was frozen in apathy to the needs of my body.
I was staring at the ceiling when the squeal of door hinges signaled another visitor. I did not care enough to look. If it is Claire, I told myself, it is too late. If it is Claire, I still have no choice but to leave.
As the swish of nylons and a brace of perfume reached me, I discovered I had lied to my heart. I did care. A sudden hope surged through me. Together, Claire and I would find a solution. Perhaps she would leave Charleston with me.
I struggled to my elbows as quickly as possible, my apathy and despair banished instantly.
Claire!
Only it was not Claire.
It was Helen deMarionne, Claire’s stepmother. Helen dressed youthfully and had dyed her hair to match Claire’s. Ash blonde swept up in a short beehive. Lips dark red, high cheekbones accented with blush.
She was elegant in a full-length summer dress, diamonds sparkling at her ears, from her neck, from her fingers. But her scorn was less than elegant.
“I can hardly bring myself to speak to you,” Helen said.
“At least that hasn’t changed,” I said, bitter in my disappointment that it was Helen, not Claire, in the hospital room.
Helen stepped closer and slapped me hard across my face. “Because of you, my only son lies in a coma,” she said, trembling. It was the first time I had seen any emotion in her. “A
nd you make jokes.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I truly meant it. “I should not have said that.”
Helen went to the window and stared outside at grass and trees and flowers until she regained her icy composure. When she returned to the bed, she remained standing. To pull up a chair and sit at my bedside would have been more intimacy than she could bear.
“You knew I would oppose your marriage. You knew from the beginning that Claire was to marry Pendleton. That is our way.”
I replied in a flat voice, “Not someone who comes from white trash instead of a sixth-generation Charleston family.”
“If you want to put it in those words, yes. I have never disguised my feelings toward your interest in Claire.”
“No, you haven’t,” I said. “Perhaps there is something admirable in that kind of honesty.”
“Then let us continue in that admirable honesty. I have just spoken with the chief of police. He tells me you came to an agreement during his visit.”
I moved my eyes away and stared at the ceiling. Emptiness began to fill me again. I was mildly surprised to discover this—that emptiness can fill a person.
Helen’s voice grew sharp. “I understand you came to an agreement with Edgar Layton.”
“Yes.”
“The proposed monthly stipend was satisfactory?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I want you to understand that. You cannot come back later and ask for more. In fact, you cannot come back. You do understand that.”
“Yes.”
“I have the legal agreement with me. Sign it, then.” She put a pen in my clenched fist. “Sign it, then.”
Helen held a piece of paper. She pulled a Bible out of the drawer next to the bed and placed it on top of my chest. “Sign it.”
I would not betray my anguish to her. Somehow, I forced the small muscles of my fingers and hand to obey my will.
I signed the paper, annulling my marriage to Claire.
“Geoffrey Alexander Gillon represents our family in legal matters. He will take care of the financial arrangements. Tomorrow you will be moved to a hospital in Asheville. Do not return to Charleston. Do not ever communicate with my daughter.” She took the paper and put it in her purse.
I did not answer.
Helen walked away without a good-bye.
At the doorway, she stopped and stepped halfway back inside. “It was not easy to tell Claire that you were in a hospital somewhere in Atlanta,” Helen said. “It was not easy forcing her to remain in Charleston to watch over her brother instead of driving to Atlanta to find you. She is crazy with grief and worry about you. It hurts me to see her in that state. I want her happy.”
Helen shook her head. “There was a time, long ago, when I was young and believed in love. Enough of who I was then remains that I half wanted to hear that you would not accept this agreement. I might have believed what you two had together was much stronger than any barriers I could have put in place. In time, I could have learned to live with it, if Claire truly was happy with you.”
Helen’s face was filled with disdain. “I’m glad I found out the truth now. It is worth the money I’m spending to keep you away from her.”
She left. The Bible was still on my chest. Now I had abandoned Claire and signed the paper on top of the Bible. I picked it up and threw it at the wall.
A spasm of pain gripped the stump of my leg. My clenched jaws could not contain a gurgle of agony. Tears streamed freely down my face. It was not my leg that brought me these tears.
**
“Helen deMarionne,” Elaine said, taking me away from the memory. “Such a scandal when she married Maurice deMarionne. He was in his seventies. One foot in the grave. And then she appears from nowhere, absolutely nowhere, and helps him place his other foot in the grave.”
“Laney,” Glennifer said, “you make it sound like she murdered him. Maurice died from pneumonia.”
Glennifer made a face for my benefit. “Believe me, if there had been anything at all suspicious about Maurice’s passing, someone would have investigated. She was so much younger than he; all of us knew she was only interested in his money.”
“I simply meant she was a young woman,” Elaine said. “If Maurice got his money’s worth, I’m sure it exhausted the poor man, and most surely it affected his health, leaving him susceptible to pneumonia.”
Glennifer giggled. “Put that way, Laney, I’d have to agree with you.”
“Helen came from out of nowhere?” I asked.
“Not exactly nowhere. She claimed to have come from the plantation areas of northern Georgia, but she simply had no family connections whatsoever.”
“Oh yes,” Elaine added. “In our debutante days, she would not have passed muster. Not at all. But times do change. It seems that—”
Elaine gasped. Her eyes widened. She reached across the desk and grabbed one of Glennifer’s arms. “Glenny! Remember who invited Helen to the Christmas party and introduced her to Maurice deMarionne? Remember where . . .”
Glennifer gasped. She looked from Elaine to me and back to Elaine again. “At the Barrett mansion on South Battery!” Glennifer said.
“Yes, yes, yes,” Elaine said with glee. “And you know who invited Helen, don’t you!”
“Yes, yes, yes. I remember that evening. And the dreadful dress that Helen wore. So low cut that she didn’t dare lean forward. Except occasionally for Maurice’s benefit. People talked about that dress for months.”
“Only because Maurice made such a fool of himself. How is it that men can have so much money and so little brains?”
Elaine turned her eyes to me. “Certainly you know that his daughter Claire resulted from his third marriage. Claire was only two years old at the time, his third wife divorced and gone only a month, and there he was, ready for marriage number four as soon as he saw Helen.”
“I knew Helen was Claire’s stepmother,” I said, forcing another onslaught of memories to remain at bay.
“You are certainly right, Laney,” Glennifer said. “Maurice was an old goat. I wonder how long it would have taken for him to tire of Helen if he hadn’t died first?”
“Helen deMarionne,” I reminded them. “You were saying how she met him.”
“Oh yes,” Elaine said. “It is so peculiar that you would ask about her.”
“So peculiar,” Glennifer said. “After all, no one had heard of Helen or knew her background. Yet there she was, on the guest list. It certainly raised eyebrows when we discovered who had placed her there.”
“Not only that,” Elaine said, nodding firm agreement, “she had reserved a seat for Helen right beside poor old Maurice. He didn’t have a chance after that.”
“Who invited Helen?” I said, leaning forward. “Who placed her beside Maurice? Tell all. Tell all.”
Elaine and Glennifer exchanged glances. Each nodded at the same time.
Elaine spoke for both of them. “Why, Nicholas, it was your mother.”
Chapter 4
ROOM 2553. EDGAR LAYTON.
The letters were typed neatly on a square of ivory paper, held in place at eye level by a small rectangular sheet of clear acrylic. The ivory paper was tabbed so that it could be easily lifted from the protective plastic, which was designed to be lifted and discarded and replaced with another square of ivory paper with another patient’s typewritten name when Edgar Layton no longer needed room 2553. Invisible behind the official neatness and implied transitory status of the neatly typed tab of paper was a three-word death sentence: ADVANCED COLON CANCER.
I knocked on the half-open door. No answer. I pushed it open, uncaring if the man inside wanted solitude as he neared death.
The private room seemed to say that Edgar Layton lived large, even in dying. No white antiseptic walls. No unpleasant odors of vomit or urine. No additional narrow beds crowded by visitors with nervous laughter. But a large bed centered in front of a massive color television. A phone sat on the bedside table; Picasso prints adorned th
e walls. Half-drawn curtains allowed the softness of morning sunshine to caress the patient where he lay sleeping.
At the nurses’ station, they’d warned me that Edgar Layton might be drowsy from painkillers; they had been right. I moved a chair beside the bed and studied him in his morphine-induced sleep.
I found myself still fascinated by his massive skull. His dominant features—the heavy nose, stubborn jaw, large forehead—remained unchanged from my memories of him on the occasions our lives had intersected.
Here in the hospital, all those decades later, not much other than his massive skull remained to remind me of how I had once feared him.
Where once thick hair had given him pride, the top of his skull was now covered with age spots and thinning baby-soft hair. The skin around his cheekbones was deeply creased into the hollows of his cheeks, giving him a gauntness that almost allowed me to feel pity.
I was fascinated, too, in a morbid way, at how much his body had retreated into its frail shell. The blankets seemed to press him down, as if he were the husk of an insect wrapped in a cocoon of spider’s webbing, long sucked dry of its juices and movement. His breathing was not a rasping snore, but a pinched struggle through an oxygen tube clipped to his nose. A man once so powerful, now so weak. The giant oak named Edgar Layton, immovable in any wind, impervious to every storm, had rotted quietly from within and was ready to topple.
This was a reminder that a man can defy God for only the brief instant that his life flickers across the expanse of
eternity.
Watching Layton, I found no compassion.
I should have taken the reminder as a need to return to God myself. I should have allowed my heart to hear some echo of the compassion of the Son he had sent to walk this earth. But I had my own god of hatred and revenge, a god which thirsted for the sacrifice of my soul upon its altar. This assumed, of course, that I believed I had a soul. And that God was the creator behind it.
**
My clearest and earliest memory of wondering about God resulted because of a telescope.
Out of the Shadows (Nick Barrett Charleston series) Page 3
