Beyond Midnight

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  "Serendipity." Helen smiled and knocked back some more of her tea. "So Katie was Peaches's first real responsibility?"

  "Unless you count the elderly woman. Which you should."

  There was an edge in his voice that made Helen back away from seeming to question Peaches. And, really, she was not. After all, Peaches was obviously competent. If anything, she seemed too competent. She should've been chairman of someone's board, not baby-sitter of someone's kid.

  Helen tried to erase the impression that she was second-guessing. "Caring for anyone is an enriching experience," she said. It was the best she could do.

  "In any case, it made no difference whether Peaches had experience with kids or not," Nat said flatly. "Linda still would've hired her. They were incredibly in tune—like sisters," he mused.

  He got up and went over to the glass-front cabinet to restock his teacup. "Sometimes I think about that; about how deeply Linda trusted her," he said. "Peaches knows where everything is around here—the money, the jewelry, the art. And yet neither Linda nor I ever thinks—thought— thinks twice about it," he said in some confusion.

  He shrugged off what were obviously painful memories of his wife and sat back down with a smile. "You're looking better. The tea helped. Or maybe it was the pain reliever?"

  It was an opening and Helen took it. Without admitting that she hadn't actually swallowed anything, she said innocently, "I noticed a prescription for ergotamine in the cabinet. Is it effective?"

  It was an intrusive question. Miss Manners would've said she had no business noticing any prescription in the master bedroom's medicine chest. But Helen and Linda and ergotamine were tangled up together, and Helen wanted to— had to—sort out the mess. Now.

  She was surprised by his response. A red flush of emotion darkened his cheeks as he said with deliberate calm, "Is that still there? I thought I'd tossed it."

  Clearly she'd hit some kind of hot button. She forced herself to sound nonchalant about being a snoop. "The reason I ask is, my doctor suggested I take it, but, I don't know, I guess I worry about side effects. You know how scary the fine print can be."

  Helen didn't have a clue what the side effects were. It was just the first thing, and an obvious thing, to pop into her brain.

  Nat gave her a withering stare that reduced her to ashes. Then he stood up. It was tantamount to a dismissal. If Helen had any doubts, his next words dispelled them.

  "I've kept you here too long already," he said in a voice that was utterly stripped of feeling.

  "Oh! Yes. I ... I really should be going," she answered, stung to the quick by his sudden hard tone. Feeling like Alice at the Mad Hatter's tea party, she jumped up and glanced around her. "I'm not sure where I left my—"

  "Peaches will know," he said automatically.

  This time he didn't even have to call the woman. She appeared, almost magically, at the door. "Ah—you want your things," she said without being asked, and retreated to fetch Helen's purse and jacket.

  She's made herself indispensable, Helen realized. From out of nowhere came the question: Why? She turned to Nat with a conciliatory smile and said, "I can see why you value her."

  "She's very efficient," he agreed in the same cold voice as before.

  They waited in silence for Peaches to return, then Helen accepted her things from the nanny, threw out an awkward reminder about Orientation Night, and bade Nathaniel Byrne good-bye. As for Katie, she was still napping, Peaches said; so Helen let herself be ushered out the door.

  Again.

  On the street, with her hand on the door handle of her Volvo, Helen was overwhelmed by a sense of déjà vu. It was the second time she'd been booted out of the house. She stared at the brick mansion with its windows elegantly shuttered to the street and thought, What is wrong with this picture? Why the hell am I here, on the street, when I should be there, in that house?

  She did a double take at the thought. On what grounds was she basing her claim? She stood for a long moment on the brick sidewalk under a newly leafed-out chestnut tree, working it through.

  Finally, calmly, she admitted to herself what she had known all along. On the grounds that I'm the one who's seen the ghost of Linda Byrne.

  ****

  Peaches was in her room, reading a book, when she heard the expected knock on her door. She slipped her Krantz novel under the cushion of her sofa and opened the latest issue of Money Magazine.

  "Come in," she said in a serene voice.

  Nat looked more haggard, more tense, than he had in a while. It was very comforting.

  "How'd you finally get her to sleep?" he said in a tired voice.

  "Oh, the usual way: with soothing stories."

  "Did she ask about her mother again after you carried her out of my bedroom?"

  "No. She just wanted me to hold her."

  "Well, good, I guess. Did she ask about Helen?"

  "Oh, no, not at all."

  He hesitated. "I don't like to interrupt your free time ....''

  "Please," she said reassuringly. "Sit down." She put her magazine aside.

  He dropped into a small but comfortable open-arm chair. She could see that he didn't know how to begin. The muscles in his jaw were working, just the way they used to when he was at a loss with his wife. His problem, Peaches had long ago decided, was that he was too well brought up. He refused to speak ill of anyone—women, especially— and he refused to listen to anyone else do it. That made it tricky, but not impossible, for Peaches to do her work. She waited.

  "Peaches ... look, I've never asked you this before, but ... I want to know. Did Linda ever tell you his name?"

  Ah. Well, it was bound to come, sooner or later. Peaches looked surprised, then pained, by the question. Shaking her head, she said, "Linda was very discreet."

  "As we know," he said bitterly. He swallowed hard and said, "But she never said who he was? Or where he was from? Was he from Salem?"

  "Nat ... truly," Peaches said softly. "I don't know." Her eyes glazed over with emotion. "But I think ... I somehow had the sense that he was from Boston. And in finance."

  "Oh, Jesus. Her lover was someone I know?"

  "I don't know," she whispered.

  "My God. I'm going to have to try to remember every Christmas party, every cocktail hour." He ran his hand distractedly through his hair and stared without seeing. "This is unreal," he muttered. "Still so unreal. The baby had to have been his. It had to."

  "You chose not to prove that," Peaches reminded him gently.

  That brought him back to her. "Good God, how could I? How would it have looked, demanding a DNA test after she died? Wasn't it proof enough that she tried to ... to ..."

  Abort it? Interesting. He still couldn't even say the word, much less come to terms with it.

  Look at you, she thought calmly. Burning to put it all behind you. Without that there'll just be ongoing pain, won't there? And rage.

  With a look of heartfelt sympathy, Peaches said, "They accepted that it was an accidental overdose, Nat. Shouldn't we leave it at that?"

  "How could she have been so dumb? If we hadn't seen the book on her desk with the page on ergotamine turned down ...." He shook his head. "How did she think she could safely self-medicate? Who did she think she was? God?"

  "She was desperate, Nat. Desperate women don't always think straight."

  "But why not go to a clinic and have it done? Why take the risk of overdosing?"

  "She may have been afraid you'd find out."

  "Well, I found out anyway, didn't I?" he said bitterly. "God. I thought this thing would get better with time. It just gets worse. The slightest reference to those last days, and I turn into a psychopath. I just about took off Helen's head this afternoon."

  "I'm sure you didn't do any such thing," she said to reassure him. "You couldn't possibly."

  "You didn't see the look in her eyes," he said, wincing. He got up and, on his way out, paused behind the loveseat and put his hand on Peaches's shoulder. "Thanks for
being there for me, Peach. This has been a dark time."

  Not as dark as it's going to get, she thought as she looked at him with tear-glazed eyes.

  "Dark, for both of us," she whispered. Her hand reached up to cover his. "I didn't want to believe it, either, Nat. Linda—with another man? When he started calling here, I didn't know what to do. I couldn't be certain, of course. I wanted to believe the best."

  Peaches shuddered and went on. "But when I heard her tone, her laugh, I was in agony. I truly didn't know what to do. Linda was my best friend. I f it hadn't been for her, I would never have known—"

  She stopped before the "you." Nat looked down at her querulously but did not press. He was exactly where Peaches wanted him to be: confused. Let him puzzle out the possibilities later, in bed, as he was dropping off to sleep.

  It was so much more erotic that way.

  ****

  That evening, Helen carried a plate of sliced roast turkey across the hall for her aunt Mary to divide and freeze. She laid the platter on the old enameled tabletop and said in a teasing tone, "Since you're too stuck up to eat with us, you're going to have to get sick of turkey all by yourself."

  "I don't like to impose, Lena," said her aunt. "You know that."

  "But you're not imposing," Helen said as she went to the drawer in her aunt's sweet, cluttered kitchen and took out a box of aluminum foil. "How many times do I have to—"

  "No, no, don't use new," Aunt Mary urged. "I have some scraps saved up." She went to her secret place behind the Morton's on the open shelf above the stove and pulled out several neatly folded rectangles.

  "Such a lot of meat," she said as she began carefully unfolding the foil squares with arthritic hands. "How big was the bird?"

  Helen sat with her chin on her knuckles, watching the aged woman struggle through the simple chore. Her aunt was slowing down, no doubt about it. "I don't know," she answered, distracted by the thought. "Twenty-two, twenty-three pounds? Did you want gravy, by the way? I could go back—"

  "Oh, heavens. What would I do with gravy? Gravy would keep me up all night. No, dear, this'll be fine. Now tell me about your day. Were you able to reassure your Mr. Byrne about the preschool? What a suspicious man he is."

  "He's having a tough time adjusting to single parenthood," Helen agreed.

  Her aunt said, "How's the little girl doing? Is she still scared, poor thing?"

  "She's less afraid of me than he is," Helen said wryly, reliving her afternoon antics all over again. "Do you want me to take over wrapping that?"

  "No," Aunt Mary said, a little sharply. "I can manage." She disliked being helped with anything—from slicing bread to filling out her checks—that didn't require raw strength. But lately it was taking her longer and longer to do less and less. It was natural; after all, she was seventy-four.

  Helen sighed. Seventy-four wasn't so old. Her aunt's friends at the senior center were all in their eighties and learning to line dance. Seventy-four should be the spring-chickenhood of old age.

  She broke off a piece of white meat and nibbled on it, then got to the point. "Aunt Mary, have you ever seen— you know, Uncle Tadeusz?" she asked casually.

  "What kind of question is that?" said her aunt, busily rearranging several large slices this way and that to fit on the foil. "He's been dead how many years?"

  "I mean, since his death."

  Aunt Mary looked up. "In my dreams? Do I dream about him?" she asked her niece.

  "No," said Helen carefully. "This would be more like—" She cleared her throat. "—when you were awake."

  Her aunt kept rearranging the breast meat; slowly, deliberately, uselessly. There was no way it was going to fit on the small piece of foil.

  "No, Lena," she said mournfully. "I wish I did." She had a thought. "Why? Do you see Hank?"

  "No. Not Hank."

  "Someone else, then?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you know who?"

  It was an amazing conversation—at least to Helen; God only knew what her aunt and friends talked about at the senior center. Probably this kind of thing comes up often, she told herself. Maybe it wasn't so weird, after all. She took a deep breath and plunged ahead.

  "You remember I told you Mrs. Byrne—Katie's mother—died suddenly? Well, I think I saw her at the mansion today. Her ... her ghost, I mean," Helen said, wincing at the word.

  Her aunt looked up. "Oh, dear," she said, sad and distressed. "Where?"

  "In the bathroom."

  "Is that where she died?"

  "No. I have the impression he—they—found her in her bed."

  "Oh. Then it was probably some other ghost you saw."

  "Wha—" A sliver of dry meat caught in Helen's throat. She coughed and ran for a glass of water, then drank it in one breath and, after she settled down, resumed her surreal exchange with her aunt.

  "Is this, you know, something that happens to people as they get older?" she asked, folding two scraps of foil to make a larger piece. "They develop an ability to see and hear strange ... things?"

  "Ghosts, you mean?"

  Helen winced again at the word and nodded.

  "Good heavens, no," said Aunt Mary. "I don't know anyone who's ever seen a ghost. Except now you."

  With a preoccupied frown she began piling another load of meat on another piece of foil, with no more hope of making it fit than the first unwrapped pile.

  Suddenly she looked up and said, "Did you bring any gravy for this, dear?"

  "Gravy? Oh—I'll go get some."

  Helen didn't know which she found more unnerving: the talk of ghosts, or the talk of gravy. Immeasurably distressed at her aunt's growing ineptitude, she said gently, "I have some much bigger scraps of foil, Aunt Mary. I never remember to use them. I'll bring those, too."

  Her aunt's tired, lined face went as bright as the morning sun at the prospect of free foil. "That's the trouble with you young people nowadays: waste, waste, waste," she said in a good-natured scold. "You don't remember the Depression."

  But you do, Helen thought, kissing her aunt's cheek on her way out of the kitchen. Even if that's all you remember.

  "Be right back," she said, cheerful as a robin.

  She dashed across the hail to crumple some new foil, then fold it flat again. Uppermost in her mind was the thought that the woman who raised her, the woman who loved to cook even more than she loved to garden—that dear, dear woman, one of the loves of Helen's life, had just lost her ability to wrap up leftovers.

  Chapter 15

  At the end of the school day Helen left The Open Door and took herself off to the Salem Athenaeum, where she spent an hour poring over a handbook of prescription drugs. She was looking for an answer to a very simple question:

  If ergotamine was so good, why did she think it was so bad?

  With a medical dictionary at her elbow, she waded through pages of mumbo-jumbo and came up with a couple of interesting facts. One: a migraine could be bad enough to cause nausea and vomiting. Two: ergotamine itself, sometimes used to relieve migraines, could cause nausea and vomiting.

  So much for modern medicine. At least it explained why Helen reacted so strongly whenever she heard or saw the word ergotamine. Somewhere in her past, she must have known someone who'd suffered side effects from it. Yes. It explained a lot. She felt an enormous surge of relief.

  She was about to close the handbook and hurry home to make dinner for Becky and Russell when her eye fell on the word oxytocic at the end of the description of ergotamine.

  That word, she knew.

  ****

  "It's a drug that induces labor," she explained to Becky after supper as the two were clearing away the dishes. "Sometimes doctors have to rely on oxytocic drugs like ergotamine in difficult deliveries."

  Helen wasn't sure whether her daughter really needed to know that, but she was aching to tell someone about her discoveries. And in any case, she wanted Becky to feel comfortable talking with her about sex and babies. Nowadays, that was more important t
han ever.

  Becky understood the problem instantly. "But why would Linda Byrne take ergotamine when she was pregnant? Wouldn't that be dangerous?"

  "Definitely. Headache or no headache, any physician would've warned her not to use it," Helen said. "She could easily have had a miscarriage."

  Now Becky was caught up in the mystery. She lifted their chronically hungry cat from the counter and draped the slinky black creature across her shoulder, then stroked her fur thoughtfully. Helen could hear Moby's purr from across the room.

  "Hey. Wait a minute," Becky said, startled by her own powers of logic. "Like, who says she even took the drug? You said the date on the bottle was nine months ago. She wouldn't have been pregnant then!"

  Helen went into the butler's pantry, now a laundry room, and began transferring wet laundry from the washer into the dryer. "You've never had a migraine," she called out to her daughter. "You don't know how desperate ... how irrational you can become."

  "Yes, I do," Becky retorted. "I've seen you with one."

  Helen set the dryer controls, then came back out to the kitchen to fill the kettle. "Are you having tea?" she asked her daughter, though she had little hope that her daughter'd be able to linger.

  Becky shook her head. "Library." Still, she seemed reluctant to dash out, maybe because she'd developed an emotional stake in the Byrne family. She was in love with the father, amused by the daughter and—now, too late— intrigued by the mother.

  She took a seat and draped the cat across her lap, puzzling it through. "Wait! If Mrs. Byrne did take ergotamine, she must've lucked out because we know she was still pregnant when she died," she said triumphantly.

  Helen shook her head. "I don't think she took the drug. I'm sure she didn't."

  "But, Mom! You just said—"

  "She was too smart, too well-informed. Too devoted." As a mother, if not as a wife, Helen added to herself. "What I need to do is prove it," she threw in indiscreetly.

  That set Becky off big time. "Why? What difference does it make now? She's dead. It's irrelevant!" she said, confused and irritated by her mother's twists and turns.

  Poor Becky. She was being so adult, so logical. Whereas her mother, Helen thought wryly, was being an emotional, irrational pain in the butt. Talk about your role reversals.