by Karen M Cox
“They’re not necessarily the type of family members you show off, Mary Jo. Technically, Jane isn’t even my cousin.”
“What do you mean?” She sipped her Tab and those earnest blue eyes searched my face.
“Well, every family has at least one eccentric branch, I suppose. And it’s the seventies—people don’t feel embarrassed by quirky family members like they used to, but…are you sure you want to hear this?”
She nodded, and I leaned back against the ladder back chair. It gave an ominous creak as if to signal the start of a dramatic tale.
“All right then. Delores was married to my mother’s older half-brother, Edwin, and they have a daughter, an unfortunate creature named Helen.” I touched my temple with my forefinger. “Not quite all there, I’m afraid.”
Mary Jo gasped. “Oh, how sad!”
“Delores is my aunt by marriage, of course, and she has another niece who is almost exactly my age. She’s an actress in New York and while her first name is Martha, she goes by her middle name professionally. So, she’s Jane Fairfax.”
“Is she famous?”
“Heavens, no!” I snorted. “She does a lot of that ‘Off-Broadway’ stuff—writes my aunt and cousin about it all the time. You would think that anyone who had any talent at all would be on Broadway, but they all seem to think Off-Broadway is a big deal.”
“You’ve never told me about Jane before. How interesting!”
“I don’t think there’s much to tell, really. She left home right after high school, not that I can blame her for that at all. She’s always wanted to be an actress, ever since she was a little girl. I have to admit, Jane does have a lovely singing voice and plays the piano quite well. She’s a sweet girl, but she’s so quiet and closed off. Most of the time she seems to be off in her own world. But she had it rough growing up, so I shouldn’t be so hard on her.”
“Why did she have it rough?”
I shook my head in pity. “Mm-mm-mm. It’s kind of a sad story.”
Mary Jo reached over and patted my hand.
I looked up, surprised at her compassionate gesture. Mary Jo’s eyes were kind and concerned—and interested.
“Well, you know about my mother’s family. They owned an old but well-known horse farm here in the Highbury community. When my grandparents passed on, my mom and Nina became beneficiaries under a family trust, and my mother’s half-brother, Edwin (from my grandfather’s first marriage), inherited the farm and some money of his own. Edwin was considerably older than my mother, and he died early of a heart ailment, before I was even born. He had run the horse farm for several years though, and that ended up being a bad thing. After he died, it came to light that the farm was deeply in debt. Edwin also had some gambling ‘issues,’ so most of his estate was sold off to pay his creditors, both on the high and the low side of the law. All that was left afterwards was a small bit of money that my grandparents put aside for Helen. It was set up so she could draw the interest off it for living expenses, but the principal was tied up until she was married or fifty, whichever came first. At the rate she is going, Helen has an excellent shot of reaching fifty—she’s healthy as a horse—but the chances of her marrying are slim to none because, to be horribly blunt, she’s nuttier than a fruitcake.”
“Oh my! And what about Jane? How does she fit in to the story?”
“Oh yes... Jane. Well, Helen shared her money with her mother, my aunt Delores, but there just wasn’t that much to share, so they barely squeaked by. Nina and Daddy even help them out from time to time when things are tight, so they have what they need. It isn’t easy, but they always got along okay. Then, when Jane was fourteen, a terrible tragedy occurred.”
“What happened?”
“Jane’s parents were killed in a car accident.”
“Oh no!”
“So, Jane came to live with her aunt—who remember, is also my aunt by marriage—and my cousin Helen. It was a bleak time for all of them, as you can well imagine. I felt sorry for Jane, but she was so…”
I remembered how frustrated I was when I tried to reach out to Jane all those years ago. The resentment all came flooding back. Even now, it still annoyed me. “She’s so aloof. I tried to be kind to her, to be friends. I really did. But she shut me right out.
“Anyway, there was very little money to support them all. So as soon as she could, Jane left to pursue her dreams of being a theater star in New York.”
“How exciting.” Mary Jo sighed.
“Jane had some connections, I gather, through a girlfriend of hers, Natalie Campbell. Natalie’s father is a playwright, so they helped Jane get started, get auditions, whatever.”
“What a story!”
“Isn’t it? I’ve often wondered how she could leave Delores and Helen here to fend for themselves, but I suppose not everyone feels compelled to take care of family members the way I do for Daddy. Her situation is different from mine, as George reminds me periodically when we’ve talked about it. Helen is Jane’s cousin, not her parent, and Daddy isn’t able to work, whereas Aunt Delores and Helen probably could, if they had the inclination. But some people can’t be resilient, after being raised to lead a life of privilege, like Aunt Delores and Helen were.
“Jane, on the other hand, has done better for herself, but then she isn’t hampered by family obligations like me, or by Helen’s…oh, shall we say, quirky personality.”
“I can’t wait to meet them,” Mary Jo said with conviction.
“You’re sweet to say so, but I wouldn’t expect too much if I were you.” For about the fourteenth time, I marveled that Mary Jo Smith was almost too good-natured to be true.
Twelve
George was deep into reading Shogun when the phone rang, startling him with its clanging interruption. It was the Sunday before Labor Day, and although he had Mr. Woodhouse’s birthday party to attend tomorrow, he’d eschewed all other social engagements for the weekend. He was savoring the solitude of being holed up in his townhouse, ordering takeout and catching up on his reading. No legal briefs dared enter the place this weekend.
He answered the phone hanging beside the fridge and simultaneously fetched himself a cold beer.
“Hello?”
“George, hi. How are you?” It was his brother, sounding a little more harried than usual.
“I’m fine. What’s up?” Jack rarely called him on the weekends unless there was a family thing going on.
“I’m feeling a little guilty.”
“This sounds serious,” George quipped. Jack was always feeling a little guilty about one thing or another. It was part and parcel of his nature.
“Ha-ha. No, I mean it. I called to ask you a tiny favor.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
“Can you go over to Hartfield Road and check on Emma?”
George set down his beer on the counter, concern sweeping over him. “What’s wrong with Emma?”
“She’s fine, I think. But she’s watching Henry and Taylor, and it wasn’t a pretty scene when I left. And the au pair went to see her family in Arkansas for a few days.”
“Jack, she’s trying to set up for her father’s birthday party tomorrow. If you needed a babysitter, you should have hired one.”
“Well, she offered, and I was kind of in a rush, so…”
George suddenly processed the background noise coming over the phone—voices on an intercom and some kind of beeping noise.
“Where are you?”
“I’m at the emergency room with Izzy.”
“What?”
“We came down for the weekend, stayed at Mom and Dad’s house while they’re gone to Europe. We didn’t stay at Hartfield because you know how the babies discombobulate John.”
That was an understatement. John loved his grandchildren, but small doses were about all he could handle. “Is Izzy alright?”
“Yes, I think she’s doing better, now that she has the IV fluids.”
“What happened?”
“Sh
e was fine Friday when we drove down here, but she started running a fever that night, throwing up and stuff. I guess I kind of neglected her, because I was trying to keep the kids away so they wouldn’t get it. I didn’t realize how bad off she was. But she couldn’t keep anything down, even water, and I started to worry…”
This was an unusual amount of worry, even for Jack.
“So, she has the flu or something?”
“Maybe, but it’s complicated because…” Jack hesitated.
“What?”
“She might be pregnant again.”
George was grateful his brother couldn’t see his expression. Good Lord, Jack. Don’t you ever give the poor woman a rest?
“I know what you’re thinking, and yes, I do know what causes that, but this one wasn’t planned.”
“But Isabel is okay?” George repeated, wanting to reassure himself.
“Yes, much better. But now that the crisis is over, I’m starting to feel bad about leaving Emma to take care of my kids on her own. Taylor’s been colicky, and you know, John Woodhouse can be a handful all by himself. He wouldn’t leave his room for fear the children are carrying ‘poor Isabel’s infection.’ When I left, he was fretting to Mrs. Davies about Emma catching the flu.”
George could well believe it. Since his stroke, John’s careful, detail-oriented ways in combination with his confined environment had made him almost pathologically afraid of illness. Emma handled him fine, but he could imagine the chaos on Hartfield Road right now. He could at least go by, ease his brother’s mind, and maybe keep John out of Emma’s hair.
“Sure, Jack. I’ll go by and offer my services, such as they are.”
“Thanks. I hate to ask, but I guess I sort of panicked about Isabel. I…” He stopped and cleared his throat, and George suspected he was trying to avoid choking up. “You know how Isabel loves babies.”
“Yes, I know.”
“I’ve got to be more careful though. This is too much. She’s going to make herself really ill. The doctor says there’s a chance she’ll miscarry—if she’s pregnant, that is.”
“Don’t borrow trouble, little brother. Hope for the best. I’m on my way over to Emma’s. Don’t worry about the kids. Just take care of your wife.”
“I appreciate it, George. Really. I owe you.”
“Keep us posted.”
“I will.”
After they hung up, George put on his shoes and took his keys off the hook. He jogged around back to the garage underneath his townhouse and pulled open the garage door. He’d traded in the Corvette for a BMW—a more grown-up car for a more grown-up man. Or so Marilyn had convinced him.
His former girlfriend had some rather specific ideas: what car he should drive, what clothes he should wear, which restaurants were the best. George appreciated a woman who paid attention to details and was organized, but Marilyn wanted to manage every facet of his life. Plus, she seemed to have no interests of her own except for how she could complement him. That rigid approach to life left no room for spontaneity. And it eventually drove him away from her, because despite his growing responsibilities, George Knightley still liked to play sometimes.
He was much better off without that kind of suffocating structure in his life. He could breathe again now that Marilyn was out of the picture, but he wondered how many times he was going to think he’d found the right girl, merely to realize later she was absolutely the wrong woman.
Maybe the only way to find the right woman is to make her yourself.
He wished he could find the kind of devotion that Jack and Isabel had for each other. They seemed to…fit somehow. He offered up a quick prayer for his sister-in-law as he sped down the empty city streets and out to the state road that would lead him to Highbury.
When George arrived at the big house on Hartfield Road, he had to ring the bell twice before a harried Mrs. Davies answered it.
“Mr. Knightley,” she sighed, blowing a wisp of graying hair out of her eyes, “you picked the wrong day to come calling.”
“It’s not a social call, Mrs. D. Jack telephoned and asked me to check on Emma and his kids.”
“Well, then, you come right in, young man, and thank the Lord, you’re here. Don’t know how Miss Emma does it. I been tryin’ to get some of this housework done for tomorrow’s party, but between her father fretting and them little ones, I can’t hardly get a thing accomplished. You hear that baby squalling? Lord have mercy, that child got a set of lungs on her! She got the colic for sure.”
Indeed, George could hear little Taylor screaming, interspersed with Henry’s toddler yells. Poor Emma, she was probably at the end of her rope.
He went upstairs first to check on John and found a man who was nervous as a cat.
“Come in, George. Come in. This is a mess, a real mess, I tell you. Poor Isabel is mighty ill. Jack took her to the hospital. Did you know that?”
“Yes sir, I did.”
“And the children are here, because he’s with her, and poor Emma is taking care of them.”
“So I heard.”
“And tomorrow is my birthday party, and Emma has so much work to get ready for it. She’s such a dear, and she worked so hard to make it nice for me. And now we’ll probably have to cancel the whole thing, and she’ll be so disappointed.”
“Maybe not. Mrs. Davies is here to help.”
Mr. Woodhouse wrung his hands. “But Emma will get Isabel’s fever, because I’m sure Izzy caught it from the babies, and now Emma’s taking care of the babies. And we can’t have all that company tomorrow, because then they’ll all catch it too.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it. As you see, I’m here.”
Mr. Woodhouse stopped his hand-wringing and looked at George. “You are here, at that. Do you think it’s wise to visit us in our time of sickness?”
“I’ll be just fine.”
“Why are you here?”
“To check on you, of course. I thought I’d come up here first, before I went in to help Emma—so I wouldn’t bring any germs in here with me.” His lips twitched, but Emma’s father seemed not to notice.
“That is smart thinking, George. Very smart.” Mr. Woodhouse’s expression was solemn and long-suffering.
“So, do you need anything—before I go downstairs into the germ pit?”
“No, no. Well, maybe just a pitcher of water—the distilled kind, from the bottle in the refrigerator. Emma gets that for me, because it doesn’t have any impurities in it.”
“I’ll bring it right up.”
Mrs. Davies offered to take the water with her, as she was going back up the stairs. Bracing himself, George turned to face the chaos in the family room.
Taylor had settled into a rhythmic howl, and Henry was grimacing, both hands over his ears. George looked at Emma, holding Taylor in one arm and drawing Henry to her with the other. She kissed him on the head and spoke in his ear, before standing up and crossing to the stereo console. Curious as to what she had planned, George watched from the doorway.
Emma put the needle on the record as she continued to bounce Taylor gently in her arm. The introductory groove of “Superstition” filled the room, and Emma cranked up the volume to drown out Taylor’s howls. Henry started bouncing up and down, keeping his hands over his ears. Emma transferred Taylor to her shoulder, patting the baby’s back in time with the beat.
George grinned, leaning against the doorway with his hands in his pockets and watching in amusement as Emma and Henry danced.
He pushed off the doorframe and made his way into the room, touching Emma’s elbow so as not to startle her. She half-turned in surprise and a happy smile broke over her features like the sun bursting from behind a cloud. There was a soaring feeling in his chest, and without thinking, he put his arms around the two of them from behind, joining in and moving Emma and Taylor in an easy rhythm to the song.
After a minute, she turned and handed him Taylor, whose little body was taut from screaming. He cradled their niece against
his chest, letting the warmth of his singing voice and his easy movements calm her. Emma reached out both hands to Henry and the two of them danced, Emma swaying side to side and Henry still bouncing up and down.
Thus occupied, he almost missed Mrs. Davies when she came into the room as if to ask Emma a question. Her mouth agape, she watched them for a second. And yet, the moment seemed a tad too intimate, like they had been caught in a special family moment, and he wondered what the old housekeeper was thinking. He winked at her, and without saying a word, Mrs. Davies walked out, shaking her head and smiling to herself.
Thirteen
September 4, 1975
“I heard you took care of the children yesterday,” Mary Jo said, popping a grape in her mouth as we arranged fruit on a tray.
“I did. That’s why we’re still arranging food trays two hours after the guests arrived. Where did you find that out?”
“Your father told me. He’s really worried about you getting sick.”
“I’m afraid he’s perseverating on that today.”
Mary Jo blinked, in that way that I had come to recognize as her lack of comprehension.
“It means he keeps thinking and talking about it.”
“Oh.”
“It may spoil the party for him, which I hate, because he so rarely gets together with people anymore. I wanted him to have fun today.”
“He seems to enjoy talking about you and Isabel being sick. I heard him tell your aunt Delores and Helen. Twice.”
“I’m not sick! And I’m not getting sick either. I won’t allow it.” I’d been discreet regarding the real reason for Isabel’s overnight stay at the hospital. She miscarried late in the evening. Isabel was devastated but physically she was okay, and Jack and the children were with her. There was no need to worry our father any further.
“Is Isabel feeling better?”
“Oh yes, she’s much better today, but she and Jack thought it best to just go back to Louisville and rest.”
“Oh, I’m glad...” Mary Jo’s eyes widened. “Not that she went home. That she’s better.”
