by Jean Stone
The service was long. P.J. hardly heard the words of Reverend Blacksmith; she hardly heard the eulogy given by Smitty, her father’s closest friend and loyal employee. She couldn’t take her eyes off the casket. Was he really in there? Was her father really locked inside that tomb forever? At one point she felt dizzy and closed her eyes. Miss Taylor reached over to squeeze her hand. P.J. held on, not wanting to let go.
The voices had ended. The organ music began. “Amazing Grace.” Her father’s favorite hymn. P.J. wept.
At the close of the hymn the congregation rose. The organist played “Faith of Our Fathers.” Through her tears, P.J. saw the pallbearers start to wheel the casket down the aisle. She saw the ushers begin to escort the family from the front pews. She froze. God, they were going to walk right past her. She felt Susan touch the back of her dress.
The casket came closer. Suddenly it was next to her. P.J. reached out a hand. She touched the edge. “I love you, Daddy,” she whispered silently.
The pallbearers wheeled the coffin past her. P.J. looked up, directly into her mother’s dry eyes. It was obvious that her mother recognized her. P.J.’s heart seemed to stop. Her mother turned clear, glaring eyes to Miss Taylor. Then, guided by P.J.’s unknowing brother, her mother followed the casket into the sunlight.
CHAPTER 10
Jess
It was the morning before Thanksgiving. Jess sat in her room, staring at her calendar. Seventeen days until December 14. Seventeen days until her baby would be born. She turned back the calender pages, eyeing the thick black X’s through each day, looking back to the weeks, the months, when she thought of this baby as belonging to her and Richard. She felt the ache again, numbed as it was by the knowledge that although she had been angry at Father for paying off Richard’s family, she now knew he had been right: What Richard had really wanted all along was her money.
She scooped up the pages and shoved them back into the drawer of the nightstand. In a few weeks it would all be over. She would be home for Christmas—the first without Mother—then, most likely, back to London, or to some other faraway boarding school Father had selected for her. The baby moved inside her.
“Someday,” Jess whispered, “I will make this up to you. I promise.”
Breakfast was somber, as gray-clouded as every day had been since Susan had heard of David, since P.J.’s father had died. The tall radiators in the dining room hissed at the chill of winter coming on; their sounds mingled morosely with only the occasional sluggish scrape of a fork against a plate. Jess looked around the table at the bulky figures and thought of the few mornings they had left to be together.
“I’ve got an idea,” she spoke up, her words scratching the silence. The others looked at her, but no one spoke.
“Tomorrow is Thanksgiving,” Jess said. “Before you know it, we’ll all be gone.”
“Here, here,” Ginny said.
“Mrs. Hines is going to make a turkey.” She shrugged. “I thought it might be good for all of us if we decorated the house.”
“Decorated?” Ginny asked.
“Sure. For Christmas. We could get some pine boughs.…”
“Well,” Susan spoke up, “I’ve got lots of experience at this. Shall we use one menorah or two?”
Jess tried to twist her ring. It was too tight, but she never wanted to take it off again.
“I’m not much in the mood for the holidays this year,” P.J. said.
“P.J., I know how you feel about not having your father. But this is the first Christmas without my mother too. Maybe it would be easier if we made the best of it—together.”
“Hey, what the hell,” Ginny added, “it would help to kill some time.”
* * *
After breakfast they put on heavy jackets. Miss Taylor loaded them up with shopping bags, as they headed into the brisk wind toward the woods.
“I’ll get Mrs. Hines to make hot chocolate when you get back!” the housemother yelled from the back door.
They trudged through the ground cover of brown leaves and dried pine needles crunching under their feet.
“I know the perfect spot,” Ginny said.
“For pine boughs?” Jess asked.
“Yeah. It’s a place I found right after we first came here. A hundred years ago.”
By the end of the morning their hands were sticky with sap and their backs ached from bending over their stomachs, but their cheeks were rosy and their spirits higher.
“Enough!” P.J. called. “We’ve got eight bags of this stuff. We could decorate all of Back Bay, never mind Larchwood.”
When they got back to the house, Mrs. Hines made hot chocolate. Jess thought she even detected a slight smile on the housekeeper’s face. Miss Taylor welcomed them with wire and big red velvet bows. “Pop and I went shopping while you were in the woods.”
Then Larchwood began to come alive. Bags and greens and wire and bows were spread throughout the living room, the music room, and the dining room. Miss Taylor had dug out some old Christmas carol albums, though they could hardly be heard above the chatter of the girls.
“Don’t put it there—let’s hang that one over the door.…”
“Hold the end while I wire it.…”
“It needs another bow.…”
“Susan! Can you reach up and put this one over the door?…”
Jess smiled at the confusion. This, she suspected, was the way families decorated for Christmas. In her home the servants had always done it, except for the tree. It was Jess and her mother who had always trimmed the tree.
Just then Pop’s voice was heard at the back door. “Hey, can anybody give me a hand?”
The girls went toward the kitchen, and there Pop stood, dragging a huge blue spruce behind him.
“Pop!” P.J. exclaimed. “You got us a tree!”
Jess couldn’t speak, as the tears welled inside her. She knew that though by the time Christmas arrived, she’d be back in the Manhattan town house, surrounded by velvet ladies, bowls of wassail, and foil packages her father had instructed Margaret to buy for her, this, for her, would be Christmas, enveloped by the warmth and sharing of the girls of Larchwood Hall.
When the decorating was done, Mrs. Hines appeared with a carton from their storage closet. Jess peered inside at a single strand of bubble lights and an odd collection of ornaments. Beneath them all lay a carefully folded piece of red felt. While the others were decorating the tree, Jess had an idea. She asked Mrs. Hines if she could borrow the sewing scissors and use the red felt. Their holiday, she knew, would be even better if she surprised each one of them with a little red stocking to hang from the mantel.
When the decorating was complete, Jess went off to her room with the red felt and the scissors. She pulled out a suitcase and took out a white cashmere sweater with sequins and pearls … the perfect accents for the stockings. It was then that she noticed the tissue-wrapped ball in the corner of the suitcase. She held it in her hand a moment, then went back downstairs. In the darkness Jess hung the red satin Santa with the marabou beard—the ornament she’d bought at the county fair, the one the woman had said was “perfect for ‘baby’s first Christmas.’ ”
“For you, my baby,” she whispered. “Merry Christmas.” Then, with a lump in her throat, she returned to her room to begin work on the stockings. She planned to sneak downstairs early in the morning, and while Mrs. Hines would undoubtedly be stuffing the turkey, Jess would hang the stockings up before any of the girls were awake. It would be her Christmas gift to all of them—her mismatched family, her trusted friends.
Ginny
Ginny lay in the darkness of her room, staring at the ceiling. It was weird, what had happened today. It had been … well, she supposed you might say it had been fun. Bundling up and trudging through the woods, then hanging decorations, trimming the tree. Ginny remembered having a Christmas tree. Once. When it was just she and her mother, living in that closet-sized apartment. It had been a scrawny tree, but to Ginny it had seemed a miracle, the
most beautiful Christmas tree in the world. They’d strung popcorn and cranberries, and Ginny had decorated it with paper cutouts from McCall’s magazine. There were no lights—there had been no money for lights—but Mama had let her make a star out of aluminum foil, and when they pulled up the shade at night, it sparkled from the neon sign of the bar across the street.
She turned on her side and closed her eyes. There was no money now. She’d given the ring back to Jess, along with the hundred dollars. The lone forty bucks she’d swiped from Mrs. Hines was long gone for cigarettes and God knows what else. There would be no way for Ginny to get her mother away from her stepfather, no way to get to L.A. She could hitch, she supposed. Work her way across the country. But that would mean leaving her mother in Boston … with him.…
Unless, of course, she took Jess up on her offer.…
Ginny drifted off to sleep.
Something pressed down on her mouth. Even before she was fully awake, Ginny knew she wasn’t dreaming. Her eyes flew open. In the darkness she saw a shadow.
“One sound and you’re dead.”
It was a man’s voice. His voice. Jesus Christ. She twisted on the bed. She heard the sound of tape peeling off a roll. The hand was gone. A gluey strip stuck across her lips. Oh, Christ. Jesus Christ.
He laughed. “You little slut. You thought you’d get away with this, didn’t you?”
She slapped him hard across the face.
With one hand he grabbed her wrists and forced them down. “This is how you like it, isn’t it, you little slut? Rough. The rougher the better.” He stretched another piece of tape with his other hand, then bit off the end. He pulled it tightly around her wrists. Her fingers instantly went cold. She wiggled. He had her pinned.
“Tell me, is that my kid in there?” He laughed. He pulled his body closer to her face. His penis waved in front of her eyes. It was hard and straight. “Remember this? You miss it, don’t you?” He shoved it against her mouth. Through the tape Ginny could feel its rigidness. She could smell his smell, his wet, sticky smell. One thought raced through her mind: If I puke now, I’ll suffocate. She tried to think about something else. Tried to force the panic away.
He’s not so bad. Her mother’s words stung Ginny’s mind.
He kept poking his prick at her mouth. She could hear his low laugh. Then he backed off and grabbed the bottom of her nightgown. He ripped it. Even in the darkness Ginny knew he was looking at her stomach. She started to sweat.
“It’s mine, isn’t it?” he growled. “Then all the more reason you need this.” His breath was foul. Get the fuck away from me! she wanted to scream. But her screams stayed inside.
He slid his body down the bed and thrust his penis between her legs. Ginny felt a sharp pain. The same pain she’d felt when that stranger came to her when she was four years old. The same she’d felt every time her stepfather came to her bed. She closed her eyes, waiting to get what she deserved. Then, suddenly, she thought about the baby. She couldn’t let him hurt the baby. A flash of Jess’s dead kitten came into her mind, white and bloody and dead. Maybe Ginny didn’t want this kid, but he wasn’t going to hurt it.
With more strength than she knew she had, Ginny heaved her legs together, crushing his balls. He screamed. He rolled off the bed, dragging Ginny to the floor with him. She kicked in every direction. The door of her room flew open. Ginny looked up in time to see the outline of a figure standing in the doorway, a billowing nightgown shading the light from the hall. Ginny jerked her body. She brought up her knees and nailed him in the groin. He screamed again.
She snapped her wrists. They sprang free from the tape.
Just then the figure in the doorway took a step forward and raised its hands over its head. It was holding something, something big. The hands came down swiftly, aimed at his back. In the light from the hallway Ginny saw his eyes. They bulged. She ripped the tape from her mouth and spit in his face.
The light in her room was snapped on. Ginny slid out from under him. She saw Jess, one hand on the light switch, looking down at him. There was a horrified look on her face. Ginny looked at the blood spurting from her stepfather’s back. Mrs. Hines’s sewing shears stuck straight up, out from his spine.
Ginny slumped against the bed. Something jolted her mind. The sight of the shadow in the doorway. Had it really been Jess? Then Ginny remembered. That night when she was four. The man had tried to stick his thing in her. She remembered seeing the shadow of her mother over his back. The images came back in a rush. Her mother had something in her hands. She held it high over her head. She brought it down in a single, swift movement. Her mother had killed the man, before he had been able to rape her daughter. Ginny put her face in her hands, and for the first time since that night, she cried.
“I think I killed him,” Jess said, her voice mechanical, barely audible.
“You did. You killed that motherfucker, and he’s out of my life once and for all.”
Ginny looked up at the trembling figure of Jess, her silk nightgown splattered with blood. There was a puzzled, grotesque look on her face.
“My fucking stepfather,” Ginny said. “The father of my kid.”
Jess let out a bloodcurdling scream. She fell to her knees, her hands covering her face.
“And if you ever tell anyone what I just said, I swear I’ll break your fucking neck.”
Miss Taylor, Susan, and P.J. all appeared at the same time.
“What on earth …?” Miss Taylor stopped abruptly. She stared at the body. P.J. screamed.
“Holy shit,” Susan said. “Somebody get the police.”
“NO!” Miss Taylor yelled, and tightened the knot around her chenille robe. “Call the doctor. NOW!”
“He’s dead,” Susan said. “We need the police. It’s too late for a doctor.”
Miss Taylor stooped beside Jess and cradled her in her arms. “We need the doctor for Jess and Ginny. I’ll take care of the police.”
“Looks like you already have,” Ginny said.
Through the doorway to her room came Bud Wilson. His hair was disheveled, and his T-shirt hung crookedly from his saggy pants. He looked at though he’d dressed in a hurry.
“Frances,” he addressed the housemother. “What in the name of thunder is going on here?”
Ginny couldn’t believe her eyes. So this was why Miss Taylor had been alerted the night she’d sneaked out. Old bleach head was sleeping with the fucking sheriff! Christ, Ginny thought. Christ.
“Ginny, what happened?” Miss Taylor asked as she cradled Jess.
“I think I’d better ask the questions, Frances,” the sheriff barked, then pointed around the room at the girls, shaking his finger. “Don’t anyone touch anything, and don’t anyone move. You”—he pointed at P.J.—“call the operator and tell her we need the M.E. here immediately. And don’t dare leave the house. Any of you.”
P.J., who had remained standing in the doorway, nodded and disappeared. Susan threw him an angry look. Jess simply stared ahead. Ginny looked at the sheriff. Asshole, was the only thought that came to mind.
“The fucker tried to kill me,” Ginny said. Miss Taylor winced. “Jess saved my life. My motherfucking stepfather tried to kill me.”
“Oh, dear God.” The color drained from the housemother’s face. She turned to the sheriff. “How are you going to handle this? Oh,” she moaned, “this is not good for Larchwood.”
The sheriff scratched his stomach. “Now we’re all gonna leave this room. Together.”
Miss Taylor shot him a glare. “At least go downstairs so the girls can put on their robes.”
He grudgingly left. Miss Taylor helped Jess to her feet and escorted her from the room. Ginny looked at Susan.
“It would probably look better if somebody stuck his prick back in his pants.”
Susan stared at her.
“Don’t look at me,” Ginny said. “I’m not touching the slimy thing.”
“Jesus, Ginny, was he trying to rape you?”
G
inny shrugged. “Nope. He had to take a leak and thought this was the bathroom.”
Susan stared a moment longer, then said, “I’ll only do this because it would be worse for Larchwood if I didn’t.”
“I didn’t know you cared.”
Susan stooped down and slowly turned the body onto its side. Ginny saw his prick. It was half-stiff. Creamy white fluid oozed from the tip. Susan started to touch it, then drew back. She looked at Ginny. Ginny stared back. Susan took a deep breath. With partially closed eyes she quickly lifted the puckery flesh and stuffed it inside his pants. She zipped the fly. She pulled at the hip, and the body flopped back onto its stomach. Then Susan puked all over the back of his legs.
* * *
A few minutes later the girls sat in the dining room, sipping weak tea, avoiding eye contact with each other. Jess still had that faraway look in her eyes; Susan looked in control but a little green; P.J. simply looked terrified. Old bleach head nervously played with the chenille tie on her robe. The sheriff was at the head of the table, fully dressed in his uniform, a small notebook poised in one hand, a ballpoint pen in the other. It was a scene straight out of a grade-B movie.
“I’ll need to speak to each of you separately,” Bud Wilson said.
“Why?” Ginny asked. “I told you what happened. My stepfather tried to kill me.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“He found out about the baby. He was tear-assed mad. He also found out I stole money from him to come here.”
The sheriff raised his eyebrows and scribbled in his notepad, then looked at Jess. “And then what happened?”
Jess cleared her throat. “I heard noise,” she whimpered. “It sounded like someone was hurt.”
“He was trying to strangle me,” Ginny said quickly, feeling Susan’s eyes penetrate her. The bitch had better not say a word. “He taped my mouth.” She rubbed at the rippled flesh around her lips. “I kicked him. He fell on the floor. That must be what Jess heard.”
