‘Papa still refuses to speak to me, mother says it’s the shame I have caused him and my refusal to name the father. What shame I fail to comprehend, since they are sending me away with every intention that no one will know.
‘You were gone so quickly, I had no time to assure you our secret is safe. Though I shall always delight to think of it. And in broad daylight!
‘Remember your promise to return for me one day. As you said, once we are married, we will tell people the child is adopted.
‘My heart will surely break for missing you, Robert. It’s breaking already, though you left only minutes ago, but my deepest love shall cherish and defend the part of you I carry. You are the only one to ever make me feel important; had you not loved me, I would never have been lovely.
‘I’m placing this photograph under the stairs, knowing you will find it sooner or later. Keep it with you always.
‘My love goes with you. Think of me often, my beloved. I remain your devoted
Kathleen’
Albert had heard once that if you gave enough typewriters to enough monkeys, odds are one of them would eventually reproduce a work by Shakespeare. Of course, that didn’t mean the monkey would know what he had done.
Strange how things like that stuck in his brain, the very organ which now, acting independent of any intentional thought process, produced the speculation that one of the monkeys assigned to the task of duplicating Shakespeare had escaped and begun a freelance career in love letters. The words were English, but the meaning was completely foreign.
Albert bent down, retrieved the sheets from the floor and pulled them up around his waist. He read the letter again. It didn’t help. Nor did three subsequent readings. Albert decided to consult a higher power.
“Well, I never-ever-ever in my long-legged life!” said Sarah when she had finished reading the letter. She was sitting on the arm of the sofa with a dust cloth and photograph in one hand and the letter in the other. “So Lizzie’s real name is Kathleen. Wait ‘til Alice sees this.”
“It’s a love letter.” said Albert tentatively.
“I’ll say it’s a love letter,” said Sarah. “And then some.”
“The boy . . . the man, Robert . . . it seems that he . . . he . . . did he get her . . . make her . . . ?”
Oddly enough, Albert’s meaning was crystal clear.
“He did indeed,” Sarah replied, a little indignantly. “And then disappeared. Imagine that.”
“But . . . I don’t understand,” Albert was sure he was about to illustrate his ignorance, but it had to be said, “what about Baltimore?” For the moment before the answer came, he couldn’t help but wonder if everyone went to Baltimore to have babies. Maybe there was a hatchery, or something.
“Well, apparently this young lady – Kathleen – had an aunt in Baltimore. It was common in those days to send the girl away when something like this happened. They’d say she was taking the Grand Tour, or managing the household for a sick relative.”
“But, they’d really be having babies in Baltimore?” said Albert. He’d developed an affinity for Lizzie. He understood the loneliness that spoke from her sad eyes. He knew differentness. Awkwardness. That’s the part of him his music came from. Her problems beckoned him from their dead past, where nothing mattered anymore. Safe. Far from the murder and turmoil all around him.
“And about the countryside in general,” Sarah replied, nudging the air with a wink. She handed the letter back to Albert. “Kathleen who? I wonder.” She gently dusted the picture frame. “Poor child.”
“And Robert,” said Albert, rereading the letter. “He never found this.”
“The picture? Apparently not.”
“When you and your . . . Mister Grandy . . . were working on the stairs, did you find anything else?”
“Nothing remarkable, that I recall. Just that picture,” said Sarah. “You know, I never gave a thought to its being there. This old house, you know? People have been carrying all their worldly goods up and down those stairs for so long, I guess we just figured it had fallen out of a box at one time or other and just ended up there. I certainly never imagined it was put there on purpose. And why there, of all places?”
She reached toward the letter and pulled it down toward her. Albert came along for the ride. “‘In broad daylight.’ I wonder what that’s supposed to mean?”
“Kathleen was the Judge’s grandmother’s name,” Heather said excitedly as her eyes devoured the letter. “Kathleen Antrim.”
“Kathleen?” Alice said thoughtfully. “That doesn’t sound familiar. Then again, I can’t remember what they did call her.”
“You knew Mrs. Antrim?”
“Of course I did. Wasn’t that long ago she died. Twenty? Twenty-five years? But her name wasn’t Kathleen. Kate? No.”
“Who are you talking about?” said Sarah when she finally arrived with the caramelized custard. “Be careful, Basil. It’s hot.”
Basil yelped in affirmation. He’d stuck his finger in the carmel which, in turn, stuck to him like molten glue. He shook his hand wildly in the air for a moment, then put his finger in his mouth and sucked on it.
“Honestly,” Sarah replied with a wag of the head. “You’re like the child I never had.”
“Do you remember what they used to call Miz Antrim, Sarah?” said Alice, fanning her custard with her napkin.
“They called her Ma’am, if they knew what was good for them,” Sarah replied. She leaned toward Albert, but addressed the group in general. “Mrs. Antrim owned half the town – including the Merchant’s Bank. Inherited from her daddy.”
“No, there was a name,” Alice objected. “Pet name, but everybody called her by it.”
Sarah paused in the midst of custard-cutting and assumed a thinking posture, searching the room with uncomprehending eyes. “I believe you’re right, come to think of it. Mimi!” Her roving eyes came to rest on Alice. “Mimi,” she said, and resumed serving the custard.
“Mimi!” Alice agreed in triumph. “That’s what it was.”
Heather was surprised. “I can’t believe you actually knew her!”
“What’s so strange about that?” said Sarah. “You want a little more drizzle, don’t you, Professor?” Fortunately, she was holding a spoonful of caramelized sugar over Albert’s custard. He liked it when words came with pictures. He nodded.
“Well, here I’ve been digging about in those dusty old records and letters; I guess it just seemed so long ago. It never occurred to me that there were people living who knew her.”
“At least she says we’re living, Alice,” said Sarah drily. She descended gently to the sofa and crossed her legs, placing her plate on the little ledge of lap that remained. “More than you can say for most fossils.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that,” Heather protested good-naturedly. “It’s just – well – I could have spent my time talking to you two and learned more than I have rummaging about on my own.”
“Therein lies a lesson for your whole generation,” said Sarah. “Learn about life from those who’ve lived it. So, you’re saying the girl in the picture, Kathleen, is Mimi Antrim?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. Unfortunately, there’s no date on the letter.”
“The dress dates it,” said Alice. “The collar and cut puts it somewhere between 1890 and 1900, I’d say.”
“That fits the timeline,” said Heather. “Well then, we’re on our way to answering the mystery that plagued the Judge all his life.”
“Mystery?” said the Commander. He’d finished his dessert. He glanced at his watch. 7:23. He had time for seven minutes of mystery. “What’s that?”
“One of the things he was hoping I’d be able to tell him was who his grandfather was, where he came from. All his grandmother – Kathleen – would say was that since his father had been adopted, there was no way of knowing.”
“Wait a second!” Alice exclaimed, nearly choking herself. The pieces had waited until custard was half-way down her
throat to fall into place. “IfthisKathleen,” she tapped the photograph and letter collectively, “isthat Kathleen – Mimi,” she nodded in the direction of the Antrim house, “then the son who died in the war –”
“Robertson,” said Heather, eager to lubricate the wheels of memory wherever possible.
“Robertson,” Alice repeated.
“Robert’s son. Two words,” said Albert. He spoke before he knew what he was saying. He nearly dropped the plate that rested on his knees.
“Robert’s son!” Alice and Sarah and the Commander exclaimed in unison.
“Was her love child by this Robert,” Heather added breathlessly. “So the boy was half Antrim. Kathleen onlypretended to adopt him. He was her natural child!”
“It explains why she stayed away all those years,” said Sarah. “By the time she returned to Tryon from Baltimore, Robertson would’ve been ten or eleven. Her daddy was dead by that time, so she moved home to run the mill and take care of her mother. Whenshe died, Kathleen got the mill and everything.
“And she never told her son who his daddy was.”
“Oh, how sad,” said Alice. “How very sad.”
It was, thought Albert. The past was proving no more pleasant than the present.
“So, the Judge didn’t know he really was an Antrim by blood,” said the Commander. “Or that Kathleen was his real grand-mother.” He glanced at his watch. He could wait ‘til Double Jeopardy. The first round was too easy, anyway.
Heather shook her head sadly. “Robertson went off to school and married a girl from Chapel Hill whose name was Gloria – came from an Italian family. Then the war came . . . “
“World War I,” the Commander clarified.
“World War I, that’s right,” Heather continued. “He enlisted and never came back.”
Everyone subconsciously lowered their head a little.
“Gloria, his wife, came to Tryon – great with child, as they say – to live with Kathleen and raise the child Robertson never knew.”
“The Judge,” said Sarah.
Heather said that was so. “Unfortunately, just after the war, Gloria contracted the Spanish flu and died within days.”
“Leaving Kathleen to raise her grandson” Sarah concluded.
“Well,” said Heather distractedly, gently waving the photograph. “I’m learning more here than I ever did at Antrim’s. Looks like I moved into the wrong house.”
Everyone commented on the remarkable coincidences and the tragic lives of strangers. “I know this one family in New Hampshire . . . ” said Basil.
Coffee was served, and Antrim’s past gradually collected their belongings and wandered out of the conversation, making way for other genealogical curiosities.
This was the thing about conversations that bothered Albert. You never knew where they were going to go. That didn’t happen with music. If you started out with a jazz, you ended up with jazz. It didn’t all of a sudden become a minuet or the boogaloo.
Why should he care, though? That was the real question. A boy got a girl pregnant a million years ago. So what? The grandson of those two had been murdered. A complete stranger. Tragic. Awful. But, so what? People were running around the world being unspeakably cruel to one another – Albert had become painfully aware of that. But it had nothing to do with him. Nothing to do with music. Why wouldn’t it leave him alone? Why wouldn’t it let him go?
He could feel the question forming at the back of his mind. He could feel little platoons of neurons taking arms against it while their loved ones remained at home, wringing their hands and crying ‘woe is me.’
It was like trying to hold a beach ball underwater with one finger. Hopeless. It would have to escape to the surface eventually, and it did.
“But, who was Robert?” said Albert under pressure.
“Ah,” said Alice as the theme for Final Jeopardy played in the next room. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
Chapter Eleven
“You’ll find Rupert Runyon a little, well, what’s the word, Sarah?” Alice asked, wide-eyed over the sound of butter being spread on toast. The gentleman in question, Albert recalled, was the local historian and, as such, most likely - apart from Constance, who tippled - to know who ‘Robert’ might have been.
“Weird,” said Sarah as she added frozen cranberries to the orange and pineapple slices in the blender. “It’s a word that had gone in search of meaning until the creation of Rupert Runyon, Professor.”
“That’s not the word I’d have used,” said Alice, feeling that, no matter how pleasant an intonation you put on it, ‘weird’ came out sounding harsh. “Not that it doesn’t apply,” she added. “I think eccentric would be better. He’s from England, originally.”
Sarah looked from eccentric Alice, to Albert in wonderland, shook her head and started the blender. “Rupert Runyon is weird, Alice, living up there in that, whatever it is. Wears a sweater – excuse me – acardigan and tie in all weather. Could be hot as hell’s doorstep,” she said loud over the machinery. “However . . . ” she began.
“What he doesn’t know about the history of Tryon isn’t fit to print,” Alice concluded.
Sarah poured the fruitish mixture into a pitcher over crushed ice. “If he can’t find out who Robert is,” she said, “was,” she amended. “Then he never existed. Juice, Professor?”
“Welcome to my tree house,” said Rupert Runyon as he poured dandelion tea. “My aerie.” He was referring to his truck camper, between the rear door of which and the edge of a sheer drop to the valley far below was only a narrow outcropping of rock.
Albert thought the tree-top analogy apt. In fact, he wasn’t sure he couldn’t detect a slight swaying.
The cup Albert had been given was chipped in places and covered with drawings of bunny rabbits in suggestive positions. Probably copied from a documentary on public television. The host drank from a mason jar, the kind Albert’s mother collected and always spoke of ‘putting something up’ in, but never did.
Albert sipped the tea. The taste was so bitter his face went to press immediately, without editing.
“Takes getting used to,” said Runyon. “Would honey help?”
Only if it replaced the tea entirely. “No, thank you,” said Albert. “I just . . . usually, I drink coffee.”
“Oh, well, there!” said Runyon. “We miss out on life’s finer pleasures when we indulge commercial appetites.” He stood up, or as nearly up as he could manage in the crowded confines of the camper, held his arms out somewhat, and turned slowly around. “You see before you the result of an entirely natural, chemical and meat-free diet.”
Meat wasn’t natural? Apparently there was something about animals that Albert didn’t know.
He did know the sunken eyes and sallow cheeks, though. The haunted, hunted look. Tewksbury had called them ‘bark-eaters’ and ‘lichenists,’ and there were a lot of them on campus back in Massachusetts, both students and faculty; people whose entire lives and conversation, as far as Albert had been able to discern from brief encounters, revolved around what they didn’t eat and why. They lived not to eat; to out-gaunt one another.
Albert hoped he wouldn’t be compelled to make a similar declaration. Confessing that his physiology was cohered almost entirely by donuts, Twinkies, coffee, and cigarettes; his cells bonded by additives, artificial food dye, and BHT to preserve freshness; and that without these his soul would be homeless, might be embarrassing in the present situation.
Especially since he looked a lot healthier than Runyon.
“But,” said Runyon, holding his two index fingers together before his face in a cautionary gesture, “like fine wine, you have to cultivate a taste for the good life.” He smiled triumphantly and gestured widely at his surroundings.
‘The good life.’ Albert had heard the term, but never thought about it. He took inventory of the little camper. It was as crowded with books as Albert’s apartment was with music. Or had been. Mrs. Gibson was there now. He couldn’
t imagine a peaceful coexistence between her and the mess he’d left behind.
Nor did he dare hope the mess would prevail.
Walls on either side were lined with rough, make-shift shelves that leaned precariously on one another at angles that countermanded physical laws and sagged under the weight of the books they bore. Boxes of books were stacked knee-high on the floor, allowing only small footholds of linoleum here and there. The fold-up dining table, once intended for a desk, was slowly eroding before the rising tide of literature.
Hooks in the walls, the ceiling, and on bookshelves held string bags full of dried roots, vegetables, onions, and fruit: condominiums for the extended family of houseflies and fruit flies that made their living among them.
Albert conceded that the wildlife, at least, seemed to do well on a natural diet.
The only areas inhospitable to the growth of books was the tiny kitchen and the bed, which occupied a little ledge over the cab. Elsewhere, aside from the driver’s side window, the landscape consisted of leather and paper spreading to infinity.
Albert scanned the titles in his immediate vicinity:Plato’s Republic, The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, The Anatomical Drawings of Leonardo DaVinci, Index of Sciences by al-Nadim, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Essays of the Dream Pool, St. Augustine’s City on a Hill, The Life of Thomas Paine, Murder in a Minor Key, Cruden’s Concordance to the Old and New Testaments, Tyrant lo Blanc, The Book of the Balance of Wisdom, Kabbala, The Quabas Nama, and on and on.
If there was a theme, Albert couldn’t detect it. As for ‘the good life,’ well . . . there was no piano.
“Now, pray tell what brings you to my little congeries, and why in heaven’s name do you introduce yourself as Mr. Elmo?” Runyon said as he sat himself down and ran an expressive hand through the nest of thinning hair on his head.
Did Runyon know who he was?
“Do you know who I am?”
“Of course I do, my dear man! Happily I could say the same of Beethoven, or Van Cliburn, or Horowitz, if they showed up on my doorstep and spat out my tea.”
Dead in D Minor Page 12
