by Nelle Davy
There was a silence. Betsy’s red-rimmed eyes were darting around the photos.
“Are there any of…of me?”
“No, none actually.” My grandmother picked them up and put them back in the envelope. “It could all have been avoided,” she said wistfully.
“What about now?”
“It’s too late for Julia, she has sunk to such depths. No, I’ll have to tell Cal, though God knows I wish I didn’t. I don’t want to be the one to bring this to him, but what choice do I have?”
There was a silence.
“Well, why don’t I tell him?” asked Betsy hesitantly.
My grandmother looked up at her, feigning surprise.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
Betsy wrung her hands in her lap. “I could—I should have come to you before, I see that now. I made a mistake but I want to correct it. I can make it right. I’ll go to him and I’ll tell him everything, like a friend would, just like you said. I do care about Julia,” she added. “I don’t want to see her doing these things anymore. Not with her boy and everything. But she won’t listen to me and I went with her to keep her safe, make sure she wasn’t hurt. Stuff can really get out of hand at those places.”
“So I’ve seen,” said my grandmother softly.
“And you know how stubborn she is. She would have gone anyway, so—so I went to try and keep an eye on her but…there was only so much I could do, you know?”
“Of course I do. It must have been awful there.”
“It was… Jesus—” her voice broke “—it’s been driving me mad keeping all this in.” She licked her lips, her mascara-laced tears pooling at the top. “Do you think if I spoke up now it would be too late?”
My grandmother regarded the girl for a few moments and then reached out a hand and smoothed it over her wrist.
“You know I believe you, Betsy,” she said gently. “You tell it just like that and there isn’t anyone who won’t believe you. Besides—” she gave her a little smile “—I always think it’s never too late.”
Betsy came to Aurelia on a Tuesday at lunchtime. Julia was out shopping. Betsy knew this because she had asked her to meet her in the food court of the mall to ensure she would not be at home when she called. So while Julia waited there for her to arrive, Betsy knocked on the large door of the great white house on the mound and shattered the man called Cal Hathaway Sr. who opened it to her.
He was home for lunch. My uncle and father watched as the two went into the study and raised an eyebrow to each other.
To see Betsy turn up at the house and ask for their father was odd enough. But neither of them in their wildest dreams would have expected the shouts and screams of their father that started up in the study, swiftly followed by the sound of crashing furniture bleeding through the walls.
Their mother was down in the study before they were, and though they hovered outside the door and could hear the muffled shouts of their father and the placating tones of their mother, as yet they still had not learned the truth.
Betsy came running out and slammed straight into my father, who attempted to hold her shoulders to steady himself.
“Is everything okay?” he had asked.
Betsy was flushed, her eyes darting wildly, her breath erratic.
“I done my duty, don’t anyone say anything different. I done my duty,” she repeated before fleeing.
My father and uncle looked into the study and saw that it was a mess. The chair was overturned and books and papers were strewn across the carpet, on top of which was an array of small photographs. My father picked the one up near his foot. When he saw it he covered his mouth with his hands.
“Is that…?” Ethan asked over his shoulder, but just then my grandfather let out a scream so loud, that even though they were adult men, my uncle and father both jumped back. Cal’s face had turned red with the strain, his fists raised up against his hips. He looked unlike anything they’d ever seen before, wiped clean of memory and association.
And then he stalked past them. Their mother followed him as far as the door, but she stopped at the threshold. He was in his car and was gone.
He would go to the house of one of the men who had been with his daughter. He had needed to know it wasn’t true; that it was a lie, a false rumor started in a bar when drunk under the need to perform some kind of act of bravado with his friends. Not his girl, not his child, who had been ripped from the bloody car of her mother in a cherry-patterned dress. Not Julia.
“Yes, Julia,” the man had said.
“You are sure?” Cal could not believe a man would uphold that sort of lie to a father’s face. He would quail, his eyes would flicker, his body would betray him even if his tongue did not. But he was a rod, giving nothing away, because there was nothing to give away.
So he had driven back home to get his rifle, and then had walked out to the paddock and shot the white Thoroughbred he had bought from a horse farm in Kansas twice through the head.
She had screamed. She had clawed at the front door demanding admittance. This was not the tantrum of youth designed to overwhelm obstacles, this was beyond control. This was the true meaning of fear.
Theo had been the one to cave. My father—still hoping.
As soon as she was inside, she had run from room to room, slipping past the arms of her brother and the desperate hands of her aunt, who was both berating and pleading with her at the same time. She saw no one, recognized no one.
But Lavinia saw to it that she acknowledged her.
And she did by flying at her so she could dig her nails into her face. Ethan held her back but she kicked and bit, so that Theo had to help him. She was an animal. My grandmother called it her true face.
Among the curses she threw at her stepmother like stones that bounced off of her proud battlements she reared her head back and hawked a globule of spit at her, just missing her face.
Lavinia spoke.
“Anyone would think I made you get on your back and spread your legs. Come, I’m interested, what’s the reason you’re going to give me now?”
But my aunt was screaming for her father. It hurt everyone’s ears to hear her—well, almost everyone.
“He won’t come,” my grandmother said. “He’s disgusted with you. You’ve soiled his love for you. Nothing but trouble, he’ll never come to you again.”
Julia reeled in her brothers’ arms. Murder, any sentence, any penalty, anything just so long as that woman was rotting in a ground she could piss over.
Piper pleading, begging, holding the clawed hands of the niece who was more like her daughter, though she had always pretended otherwise. But what was the use in pretending now? Though she wanted to rebuke her sister-in-law, she knew her brother, she knew the truth. God had turned his face from her, she saw now, as Julia slumped forward in agonized defeat.
But then the stair at the top of the landing groaned under a familiar weight and they all looked up. He had no eyes for anyone but her. He saw her looped in the arms of her brothers, his sister hunched over her, his wife straight-backed, blocking her path. It was like a play, but he had seen the blood of the white horse course its way in rivulets onto his land and knew this was no fantasy onto which a curtain would drop. This was real.
Just like his hatred.
No, never, he could never abandon a child. He could never let a child of his throw long shadows up the walk into exile. He was not his father.
But it was so easy.
And, among the black glass shredding any love he had for her, any memory he cherished, a sense of vindication that she deserved it.
Bitch.
So he came down to her and they all parted.
He came close to her. She stood up now, but though the words tumbled from her mouth, his ears were closed to her. This body had come from his body but he had seen, had heard, what it had allowed itself to do. Polluted filth. He saw them all over her, he saw her swallowed by it, consumed by it. His firstborn, his clean daughter, nothing
but dirt.
God, he needed a drink. He went past them to the kitchen but she broke free and followed him. She was shouting and crying in turn, trying to overcome the noise of his search for the scotch. And then her hand, that small hand that had hung around his neck twenty-one years ago in Oregon, on his arm…
His body knew what to do before he did.
His hand smashed itself into the side of her face, feeling no pain though it was already throbbing, just sending her crashing to the side of the room, and she caught her head on the kitchen table as she went down. And then her eyes wide with shock. Broken, she knew it now. Nothing between them.
He stared at his hand in revulsion as if it had been contaminated by her. His other was empty. He still had not found the scotch.
Piper now, here on the floor beside her niece, looking up at her brother while Julia clutched her temple where a small trickle of blood was already winding its way down her face.
No words, just half words, half-formed sentences that flared and died on the tongue before they even found the air. Cal…at last the thick-necked bottle cooling the palm of his hand as it ran down his throat. Nothing existed for him outside the amber liquid. He didn’t want it to.
And then a step. My grandmother standing by the doorway as her sons tentatively came behind her, horror finding new ways to etch itself across their faces. Their father oblivious to all of them: the crumpled figure of their aunt, the long milky legs of their sister sprawled on the floor, all but his bottle. This was the last image my father would take with him before he went to war the following week. This and the sight of Julia’s horse when he found it by the stables, its long legs folded over on the floor as its unseeing eyes bored into the hay bale in the corner, its brains and blood splattered on the wall and floor.
When our mother thought we were old enough, she would tell my sisters and I that our aunt had done a wicked thing, that she had been a bad wife and mother and had disgraced our family and her husband and that was why we were not to speak of her, not ever, and especially not to Cal Jr.
“But he mentions her all the time,” said Ava.
“What?” my mother asked. “When?”
“Yeah, when, Ava? He’s never mentioned her to me,” I said.
“No, but…” She trailed off and dug her fingers into her palm, a habit she had of doing when uncomfortable. She used to come home from exams with bloody half moons all over the apples at the base of her thumbs.
“He talks to me a lot about things. He—he likes talking to me, I think.”
“Well, it’s just—you shouldn’t,” our mother said. “He was badly affected by what she did to his father. That’s why—well, that’s sort of why he is the way he is a bit. Things happened after—and he was a child, but well, there’s no need for you to know that, just be careful if he brings her up again.” She resumed her folding of the pastry in the bowl. “And never mention her to your grandfather.”
But years later when I would sit by the bed of my raving grandmother, she spoke Julia’s name often and it was here I learned what my mother really meant when she had alluded to Julia’s “disgrace” and what it did to Cal Jr.
But even though I know the truth, I cannot forgive him for what he would do, any more than I can forgive myself for letting him.
AVA
A Diseased Tree
Chapter 10
IN THE AIR-CONDITIONED meeting room of Dermott and Harrison, I thought about the last time I had been in a lawyer’s office. It had been at the reading of my mother’s will. I was nineteen and it was toward the end of the summer before my sophomore year. I had been house-sitting in New York, waiting until term began, when we were all summoned to Iowa by the lawyers. It had been the first time I had seen Claudia since…well…and I remember when I walked in, already ten minutes late, how shocked I had been at how much she had changed. Ava had refused to look me in the eye and Claudia had dropped her gaze to the table when I entered. Neither of them would sit next to each other, so I had made my way apologetically to the end of a long polished table to the only empty chair, which was between them. There we had been, a triumvirate of pain and recrimination, while the voice of the lawyer droned on above our heads, reading aloud the final words of my mother, who had hoped for such a different outcome for her daughters.
But this time it’s different.
This time instead of a graying man in a forlorn suit, I got a peppy brunette with raspberry lipstick and heels that spiked across the hallway as she came out to reception and proffered an elegantly manicured hand. She was all cool smiles and crisp suits. I was there in jeans and a blazer and could not have felt more out of place, or more nervous.
While she went over the “issues at hand” (her phrase, her opening phrase I should say. Not “how are you?” or “would you like some coffee?” Preamble not a strong point), I sat there utterly unmoved. Because what she was saying had nothing to do with the Aurelia I knew. Those digits and terms meant nothing to me, or how I felt about the farm I was raised on. I did not recognize them and I could tell that neither did she. There she was in full flow, her fingers snapping at papers, manila files openmouthed on her desk. She thought she knew what she was talking about but she didn’t. Then again, from the looks she threw my way, I could tell she felt the same about me.
“Look,” I said, leaning forward during the first available pause, nearly twenty minutes after she had asked me to sit down, “I don’t want the Queen Anne dresser or the antique pearl necklace or any of that stuff. You can keep it or sell it or whatever. I’m not interested. I’m just here because—” I felt myself falter and the words slipping away, me desperately clinging on “—because I want to make sure the important things—the really important things to me, that is—aren’t caught up in all of…of Cal’s mess.”
I leaned back. She gazed at me, those raspberry lips parted just a little.
“Of course, but for our sake we want to ensure that you know everything you need to,” she said.
“Trust me, darling,” I drawled, “knowledge is overrated. Just tell me when I can go and get my parents’ stuff.”
Much later, I was picking over the plate of mac and cheese Jane had made for me when she called. Jane had tried to ask me about my meeting with the lawyer when I first got home, but I wasn’t very forthcoming. What I did do when I came back to the house was sleep, on top of the covers, still clothed. Every little thing over this place is such a battle. A painful, ridiculous war that once again I am not equipped for. When it comes to this, all that Hathaway blood seems to clog up in the veins and starve me of some much-needed spirit. But not her, no. When I answered the phone to her I could tell those particular machinations were working just fine.
“So there you are? Finally,” she said when I answered. “Thanks for letting me know FYI, Meredith, that you’d decided to take it upon yourself to deal with the farm. That was a pretty piece of unilateral thinking.”
I stared at the floor openmouthed, brain scrambling.
“Don’t think just because you’re up there that it’s all up to you, you know? I’m getting on the next plane and we can both do this together. While you and Ava might like to forget the fact—you’re not the only descendants left and other people, other equally significant people, might also like a say. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, a courtesy, you may like to note, you didn’t offer me.”
And then she hung up. I was speechless and suddenly shaking with mirth. My shoulders heaved before the laughter had even reached my mouth. God, I thought, what a thing it is to be back.
“What was that about?” Jane asked when she came into the kitchen and saw me shaking my head back and forth against the refrigerator door.
“Oh, no more than I should have expected.” I was in the grip of my laughter now. I moved positions and came to lean against the sink.
“Just—Claudia’s coming home.”
Claudia. Her hair once a mixture between blond and brown before she started dying it, her eyes dark, her no
se like my father’s, her legs like my mother’s. Their first child, a true combination of both. They had looked down on her when she was born and cried. She was the reason my father decided to return to Aurelia.
Claudia, the eldest, my eldest sister. Should have been my gold idol but instead was one of the clay gods. My early memories are filled with visions of her, her white two-piece with red sunglasses sunbathing on our lawn, her strawberry-smelling lip balm I used to steal and sniff until she caught me, the endless red licorice laces I would find around our house half chewed. My sister: scathing, watchful, ambitious. Destined to leave Aurelia from the moment she set foot on it, but she had always believed it would be on her terms.
Claudia Marie Hathaway. We used to call her Clo.
At a quarter to three, two days after her phone call, a white taxi pulled up on Jane’s street. Jane was sitting in the living room smoking cigarettes as she people-watched from the window. I was on the couch reading, my legs over the armrest. We were sitting in comfortable silence before the swift puncture of heels on stone steps rose in volume and then just before the sharp rap of knuckles on wood, Jane said, “Your sister has arrived.”
So I opened the door and there she was in front of me.
At first all I could see was deep dark red lipstick, burgundy-colored, the only part of her that was really exposed because the rest of her was shrouded in a mottled dark fur coat and a black felt hat slanted at an angle that covered most of her face. I stepped aside in greeting; in acknowledgment she entered, careful to take in, with a downward glance, my jeans and rumpled shirt. The first thing I could think of to say to my sister, who I had not seen in over a decade, was “You don’t have any bags.”
