Autumn's Child

by Kathleen Gilles Seidel

  “About you. They must want you for one of their boys. You’re a Ridge and a Catholic. Your mother and his talked about it when you all were in your cradles…although I suppose they were thinking about one of the other boys, as Ben was supposed to be a priest.”

  Colleen couldn’t get her mind around the notion of Ben being a priest…or any of the rest of what Grannor was saying. She was just starting to like the idea of a second chance with him; actually she was starting to like the idea a lot. But “making sure of him”? Their mothers planning weddings?

  “That was just talk about babies,” she said, “what mothers sometimes do. I don’t want to be disrespectful, Grannor, but people do not think that way anymore.”

  Her grandmother’s laugh was almost a cackle. “Oh, my dear child, they do. They certainly do.”

  So this was what Grannor was up to. She wasn’t trying to punish Colleen; she was trying to make a match between her and Ben. Apparently she had decided that at twenty-seven, Colleen was too decrepit to find a husband on her own.

  Matchmaking seemed out of character. Surely Grannor was more likely to relish breaking people up than getting them together. In either case, she would be demonstrating power, and more than anything Grannor loved proving that she had power.

  There probably was at least some goodwill behind the effort. Colleen knew that she was the one person whose happiness Grannor might actually care about. She was Grannor’s favorite. Grannor talked with glee about how her own daughter, Colleen’s aunt Laura, had “ruined herself” with all her divorces and affairs. If Cousin Kim hadn’t been from a “good family,” she would have been “trash.” Grannor had disliked all three of her son Norton’s wives. Her references to Colleen’s father were needling, and she never spoke about Colleen’s mother at all…probably because if you couldn’t say something nasty about someone, there was no reason to speak at all.

  * * * *

  He had done it. At dinner, sitting across the table from her, she looking and smiling so exactly like he remembered her, he decided that the honorable—the gentlemanly—thing to do was admit that she had been important to him, not ask for her forgiveness, that was too much, but just let her know. He hadn’t quite managed to tell her that she was the only woman he had ever loved, but he had gotten closer than he thought he would be able to.

  Back at the house he decided to walk down to the lake. Jason and Amanda were in the library. The glasses and liquor bottles had been put away, and Colleen’s two friends had pulled up chairs around the center table. Playing cards were spread out in front of them.

  “Oh, Ben, come save me,” Amanda called out. “Can you play bridge? Colleen and Jason can. Mrs. Ridge says she needs a fourth.”

  He was definitely going down to the lake now. “Sorry,” he said, and then, trying to sound very Mrs. Ridge–like, “I’m sure you will enjoy learning.”

  She made a face at him.

  That was the sort of thing Colleen would have done. No wonder they were friends.

  He went out to the flagstone patio that spanned the back of the house and then crossed the sloping lawn to the lake. Two Adirondack chairs had been placed near the water’s edge. He sat down.

  So, what now?

  She was still everything that he had once liked—once loved. She sparkled. That was the only word for it, sparkle. She was the sort of person who always wore costumes to a costume party, and she would seem to be having such a good time in whatever absurd getup she had rigged up for herself that after a while, even if you weren’t the costume-type, even if you were so not the costume-type, you started to regret that you hadn’t worn one.

  And to wonder why someone like her was with someone like you.

  She wasn’t perfect. She would have worn a costume because she didn’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. She was always worrying about other people’s feelings. That was fine in small doses, but she could never say no to anyone in case she might hurt their feelings.

  She also never did anything alone. Everyone loved her and would want to be included in whatever plans she was making. It was exhausting, this being with other people all the time.

  He wasn’t insensitive. He wasn’t a hermit. He liked people…just not all of them all the time. When his high-spirited family got together, there were always three people talking at once with everyone else breaking in and interrupting them. Whom were you supposed to listen to when everyone was talking at once?

  Being a “people person”—that was high praise in his family. People who love people and all that. But sometimes he had to wonder—how could you call yourself a “people person” when you talked all the time? Wouldn’t an individual who was genuinely interested in other people sometimes shut up and listen?

  Colleen Ridge was a really great person, she was probably an amazing teacher—who wouldn’t memorize French verbs to try to please her?—but they were completely wrong for each other. He would frustrate and disappoint her. She would drive him nuts. End of story. Whatever Mrs. Ridge had in mind by making her go into the village with him was not a good idea.

  A faint trace of pink lingered above the tree line on the other side of the lake. As it disappeared, lights came on across the water, glowing pinpricks among the mass of trees. Some of the lights flickered; others were steady beacons. A number of the docks were already in. A few were outlined in light; the rest had a single lamp burning at the end.

  A flutter of something pale caught his attention. He turned his head. It was Leilah, going to her apartment on the second floor of the boathouse. Her light-colored clothes were almost ghostly as she crossed the dimly lit lawn. He gripped the arms of the chair, preparing to stand up, but as she came closer, she held up a hand, stopping him. Don’t get up.

  He didn’t.

  She circled around to the staircase on the far side of the boathouse. In a minute, a light on the second floor flicked on, then a second one. Their glow spread out around the small building, turning the nearby grass a silvery green and outlining the pilings for the still dismantled dock. The windows became hard-edged slabs of empty light.

  The Adirondack chairs had been set at a slight angle. Ben could watch the boathouse’s two side windows as easily as he could watch the water. Leilah appeared first at one window, then the other, lifting her arm to close the curtains.

  But the curtains were filmy. He could still see movement and shape. So he leaned back in the chair, his hands linked behind his head, watching her undress.

  Sometimes it was easier to be a dick. And a whole lot safer.

  Chapter 3

  The back stairs were a narrow dark tunnel zigzagging from the little attic rooms on the third floor down to the kitchen. One summer Colleen’s older brother Sean wasn’t allowed to go into the lake for three days because he had told Colleen and Finn a story about the stairs. It had so terrified them that they couldn’t go up to their bedrooms at night. He had also had to write each of them a letter of apology. When her father and Mrs. Sisson had moved, Colleen had found hers. If she had had to choose between that letter and any of her grandmother’s valuable silver, she would have held on to the letter.

  Your big brother scaring the socks off you was part of a family summer.

  That’s what brothers did. They cheered when you won the spelling bee; they came and picked you up when you went to the wrong party; they told you scary stories…and then they got married and cared more about their wives than you.

  Which was right, of course it was. Colleen wouldn’t have it any other way. She shouldn’t have even been thinking about it. Families changed.

  As did sleeping arrangements. Did she really miss staying in a room where half the drawers were full of clothes belonging to people she had never met? Was she sorry that the closet in her room didn’t smell musty, that she didn’t have to hang up her clothes on a mismatched tangle of wire hangers?

  That was a lot to be said for
bedside lamps that worked, for a new mattress with an expensive pad. It was fun to look through the little basket of toiletries; there were individually wrapped toothbrushes and products scented with lavender just as Grannor’s bedroom in Georgia had been.

  So what if it seemed like a luxury bed-and-breakfast? Was that really so bad?

  She was astonished at how late it was when she woke up. She remembered waking up at her usual time, glancing at the clock—there had never been clocks in the bedrooms before—and snuggling back into the deep memory foam of the mattress pad. She must have gone back to sleep. It was almost nine o’clock.

  She dressed leisurely, enjoying the clear Carolina blue of the sky. As she was coming down the wide front stairs, the scent of the lilies in the flower arrangement drifting up to her, she heard voices in the dining room, Ben’s and Leilah’s.

  Ben was standing on a battered metal stepstool, reaching into the back of a china cabinet. A moss-and-buff tattersall check shirt rippled along his torso and was threatening to come untucked from his jeans and broad leather belt. Leilah, in a long butter-colored skirt, was next to him, her hands up, waiting to receive what he would hand to her. On the dining room table was a little colony of oddly shaped drawstring bags made of dark tarnish-proof felt. Ben’s laptop was open next to a neat stack of papers.

  “Let me get some coffee,” Colleen said quickly, “and I will come help.”

  Ben bent to hand Leilah a long flat object, its tarnish-proof bag drooping from its hard rectangular shape. It must be a tray. Leilah took it and after finding a place for it on the table, brushed a wrinkle out of her skirt. Only then did she answer Colleen. “It’s good of you to offer, but my instructions are clear. I am to work with Ben and no one else. The breakfast service is set up in the library. Would you mind helping yourself?”

  “No, of course not.”

  Jason and Amanda were in the library. Amanda, red pencil in hand, was grading papers; their school was traditional enough to have students submit some of their work on actual paper. Jason had a pile of letters printed on University of Virginia stationery. He was adding a handwritten note to the bottom of each. Colleen supposed that fund-raising professionals did a lot of that sort of thing.

  “We did offer to help in the dining room,” Amanda said, “but Leilah said no.”

  “Is the inventory for your grandmother’s will?” Jason asked.

  “Probably,” Colleen answered. “But I really don’t know. I suppose it could be for insurance.”

  “Do you know what’s in the will?”

  Colleen was surprised. That seemed like a tacky question.

  “I’m sorry,” he apologized quickly. “I am a development officer. We don’t like it when there are surprises in people’s wills.”

  Colleen could see that. How messy it would be if people thought that they were going to inherit a bundle only to find out that it was all going to charity.

  She looked down at the silver coffeepot in her hand, its handle warm from the heat of its little oil-fueled silver lamp. Covered with deep repousse Baroque decoration, it belonged to an elaborate service that Grannor had always used at holidays. In addition to the heavy tray, coffee- and teapots, creamer, and sugar dish, the service also had the warming lamp, a lidded butter dish, and a spoon jar, all of it sterling, its total value probably equivalent to the down payment on a starter home in the better part of town.

  It was traditionally passed from grandmother to granddaughter. Grannor had gotten it from Colleen’s great-great-grandmother, and the first owner had been Colleen’s six-times-great-grandmother. It was as old as the nation itself and had been buried in an apple orchard during the Civil War.

  Would it go to Colleen or to her cousin Kim? Kim was older, but Grannor didn’t think all that much of Kim or, for that matter, Kim’s mother, Grannor’s only daughter, Laura. Colleen would have liked this set for its history, but in truth, some of the other family tea services were more to her taste…not that her current high-school-teacher lifestyle needed a sterling tea service very urgently, even if it had survived Sherman’s March to the Sea.

  “I assume,” she told Jason, “that except for a few specific things, she will leave everything equally to her three children—my father, my aunt, and my uncle.”

  “It’s also possible,” Jason said, “that she’s skipping them and leaving everything to your generation. Do you have first cousins?”

  Colleen nodded. “My uncle has two sons from his first marriage. We don’t know them very well because they grew up in California with their mother and stepfather. My aunt has one daughter, and I have my two brothers.”

  “So it makes a big difference if the distribution is per stirpes or per capita.”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “If your grandmother leaves her property equally to her three children,” he explained, “then eventually, assuming that they don’t spend it all—”

  “Which is a big assumption,” Colleen pointed out. “My aunt is a spender, and my uncle is on his third marriage. My dad is the most stable one of the lot. He probably won’t touch much of Grannor’s money. He made enough on his own.” Her father was a dentist, and his practice had been successful. “He didn’t share a lot of his parents’ attitudes. That’s why he left Georgia.”

  “Then whatever happens to your aunt and uncle’s share,” Jason said, “you and your brothers are likely to eventually inherit one-ninth of the estate.”

  “My dad is sixty-one. I hope I won’t be inheriting anything for a very long time.”

  “Some people do skip a generation.” Jason was interested in this. “If your grandmother leaves assets to her six grandchildren per capita, each would get a sixth, but if she wants to preserve the original ratio, she can leave it per stirpes, and you and your brothers would get one-ninth, and your aunt’s daughter would get one-third.”

  Kim would like that. “Is this what development officers have to know about?” Colleen asked.

  “Yes. My boss is working with a lady who doesn’t understand her own will,” he answered.

  “I’m sure that my grandmother understands every word of hers.”

  “But how does any of this explain why Colleen can’t help count the forks?” Amanda asked.

  No one could answer that.

  * * * *

  Colleen and Amanda had pledged to each other that they would have their grading done by Sunday night so that they could enjoy the rest of the week. Amanda had her stack of research papers to read; Colleen had translations for two of her French classes and exams for the Latin students. She joined Amanda at the library table, and together they begin the ascent up Mount Grademore.

  Colleen started with the translations, as she found them the most discouraging to grade. The students understood the French well enough, but their ear for fluent English diction had apparently been eaten alive by their cell phones, and they punctuated sentences according to fleeting wisps of random inspiration.

  Grannor came in to say “good morning” and then went into the dining room. Although she would never admit to having any hearing loss whatsoever—hearing aids were for old people—Ben and Leilah both raised their voices. Colleen could hear the conversation. Grannor was helping them reconcile the paper inventory with the actual items. They were dividing things into “Group A” and “Group B.” Colleen had no idea what that was about, but more things were going into Group A.

  Taking a break from grading, Colleen peeked into the dining room. Grannor was sitting at the head of the table. Ben would hand her a silver piece. Grannor would announce what it was and whether it belonged to Group A or Group B. Leilah found the listing on the inventory and then checked it off. Ben put the things from Group A on the table. The Group B items were on the sideboard.

  There were many more pieces on the table; Group A was much larger. A number of the Group B pieces had cl
ean mid-century lines—mid-twentieth-century—but beyond that, Colleen couldn’t figure out why which things were in which group.

  With Grannor’s permission, Leilah served lunch in the library, but Grannor expected the evening meal to be in the dining room. Ben, instead of joining the others for cocktails, helped Leilah clear off the dining room table and lay out the place settings. When Leilah was ready to serve, Grannor swept into the dining room, Colleen, Amanda, and Jason following her like obedient ducklings.

  “Whatever people say about me,” Grannor announced, “I do keep up with the times. Jason, Ben, if you boys trade places, then dear Amanda can sit next to her beau.”

  Colleen forced herself not to look at Amanda, who was undoubtedly also struggling not to laugh at the idea of having a “beau.” By the time she was sure of her composure, her grandmother was seated, and Ben was standing next to Colleen herself. He had pulled out her chair and was waiting for her to sit down.

  That summer they had been together, he had never made a big show of the manners he had learned growing up down South. He didn’t stand up when she came into a room; he didn’t make a thing about walking on the outside of the sidewalk. That would have felt tedious and embarrassing, out of place in the snowboarding world. But there had been little things. If she came in to lunch late, he would hook his foot under the rung of a chair, pulling it forward to her. When he was ready to leave a bar, he would get off the bar stool and stretch, his shoulder blades contracting, his chest opening, then he would reach out his hand for her, a silent announcement that he was not leaving without her.

  He might not have been great with words, but his body had spoken for him. You matter. You are special.

  And that body, the effortless strength, the unending stamina, the lithe flexibility. No other man had ever been built like Ben had been.

  The Ridges had always used their beautiful things. Some of the porcelain plates had chips along the rims; some of the handles of the teacups had veins of yellowing glue. The sterling platters had little scratches cross-hatching the gleaming silver, and the Old Sheffield plated pieces had softened to a warm golden as generations of polishing had worn the layer of silver so that the copper glowed through. Colleen had been taught that this made them more beautiful than anything shiny and new.