Testimony

by Paula Martinac

  “Ruby! Oh, I must look a fright.” She peered around Ruby to her house across the street. “What’s wrong? Is Darrell all right? The boys?”

  Ruby noted the rapid progression of Amanda’s thoughts, from agitation about her appearance to genuine concern for Ruby’s family. It confirmed that somewhere in Amanda’s body resided a human being.

  “Everyone’s fine, Amanda. I didn’t mean to startle you.” Ruby drew in a breath. She’d decided to extend the invitation in person, at a time when Darrell would be having coffee (drinks, she suspected) with his former law partner. But on the Blakeneys’ front porch, the words she planned caught in her throat.

  “I simply . . . well, I wanted to invite you to tea this afternoon.”

  Amanda cocked her head to the left. “Why?”

  Ruby had prepared for the question. She had never invited her neighbor to tea before, and Amanda knew that Ruby and Gen were friends.

  “Just wanting to be neighborly,” Ruby said as casually as she could manage. “I know you’re going through a lot. Your family.”

  “You heard.”

  “I thought you might like to talk about it.”

  Ruby’s neighbor wiped her hands on her calico apron, drawing attention to the frayed edge of the patch pocket. Amanda quickly untied the strings from around her waist and balled up the apron.

  “Will your guest be joining us?” she asked.

  For a second, Ruby worried that she meant Gen, but then realized Amanda had likely seen Juliet coming and going. “Dr. May just left. She stayed with us a few days.”

  “I heard she was asked to leave Baines.”

  “No, she resigned. Family matters in Wilmington.”

  Amanda blinked several times, as if she almost believed Ruby’s explanation. “I’m not sure there’s anything to talk about, Ruby,” she said after a long pause. “I’ve about talked myself silly, what with the provost and the dean and my husband and Lee-Anne.”

  Ruby noted that she didn’t mention Mrs. Carr or an attorney. “I understand. Maybe we could just relax then, enjoy some cookies and talk about the books we’re reading.”

  Amanda smirked. “Oh, I don’t have time to read, what with the children and everything.” Ruby wasn’t sure what constituted “and everything.” Amanda’s offspring were all in school, and she employed a Negro housekeeper who came daily for cooking and cleaning.

  Ruby was about to accept defeat with a cheery rain check, then, when she noticed Amanda’s shoulders sag, as if the effort of holding them back and straight had finally overpowered her.

  “It would be nice, though,” Amanda said, “to just sit and have tea like a normal person.”

  When Ruby suggested four o’clock, she inwardly reproached herself for planning to ambush a woman who was so despondent and tired-looking. She considered calling Gen to cancel, but her guilt passed quickly. Amanda Blakeney had set everything in motion. She’d ruined two good women’s lives, and she needed to be held to account.

  ✥ ✥ ✥

  Darrell put a glitch in Ruby’s plan by sauntering into the kitchen as she set out her china tea cups and arranged snickerdoodles on a plate.

  “Shouldn’t you have left already? Did you forget your coffee with Jack?”

  Darrell examined her evenly. They’d been married too long not to pick up on each other’s tricks. “He’s got to be in court today. We postponed till next week.” He nabbed a cookie and polished off half of it in a single bite.

  “What’s going on here?” he asked through a mouthful.

  Ruby held onto the counter while considering her options. None of her possible lies were strong, and besides Darrell would see right through anything she picked.

  “I invited Amanda for tea,” she said, hoping that simple truth would satisfy his curiosity.

  “Amanda Blakeney?”

  “I don’t know any other Amandas.”

  Darrell watched in silence while she bustled around him. As she poured milk into the creamer, he said, “I count four cups.”

  “You missed your calling, darling. You would have been a terrific prosecutor.”

  Neither the endearment nor the quip distracted him. Her husband followed her into the living room, where she set the silver tea tray on the table in front of the sofa.

  “What are you up to, Rube? Amanda Blakeney has come to tea, let’s see . . . I’d say never. Who else will be here?”

  She made a show of taking her time to lay everything out neatly. “Frances Palmer, from biology. About my age, plump with salt-and-pepper—”

  “I know who Frances is. Who’s the fourth?” He stilled her hand, which was fussing with the cups, and turned her to meet his gaze. “Tell me it’s not who I think it is.”

  Ruby drew a long sigh.

  “My God, Ruby,” Darrell said. “I know you probably think you’re helping, but you could hurt Gen more by putting those two in the same room. Amanda’s attorney—”

  “I don’t think she has one.”

  “Then Gen’s. Gen’s attorney would advise against it. Hell, any attorney would. I would, and all I did was taxes.”

  “No one’s on trial,” Ruby noted. “It’s not like witness . . . tinkering.”

  “Tampering.”

  “Tampering. Thank you.” She reached out to stroke his cheek, dark with afternoon stubble, but he deflected her touch. His brow creased with a mix of worry and vexation.

  “Don’t do this.”

  “You don’t even know what ‘this’ is.”

  “I have a fair idea.”

  “Go somewhere, Darrell,” she said, returning to the tea cups. “Please. They’ll be here soon.”

  The front door slammed, rattling the cups. Her husband didn’t take his hat or gloves, which he needed on such a cold day. Ruby glanced out the window, relieved to see the street had been salted after the recent snow. Maybe Darrell would drive around playing the radio, as he did years back when they fought and the boys still lived at home. She hadn’t meant to upset him, but his disapproval didn’t figure into her plans.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Gen

  Gen spotted the green and white Roadmaster parked at the curb in front of Ruby’s, and the tightness in her chest loosened. The women in Ruby’s faculty group all teased Frances about owning such a classy car.

  “Not my idea.” Frances had blushed, leaving unspoken whose idea it actually was. Frances rarely mentioned her companion, Ellen, by name, and out of discretion no one asked about her. “If it were up to me,” Frances had joked, “I’d drive a twenty-year-old station wagon.”

  Ruby had instructed Gen to slip in through the unlocked front door without ringing the bell. “Give us a fifteen-minute lead,” she’d suggested.

  On the threshold, Gen glanced at her watch, which read 4:17. She took a deep breath of frosty air, which burned her lungs, then twisted the knob and strode in unannounced. In the foyer, she decided to keep her coat on, in case she needed to make a hasty exit.

  “That must have been a very hard decision,” she heard Frances say. Tea cups clinked against saucers.

  “Oh, yes. The women in my family have always attended Baines.” The lilting voice reminded Gen of Vivien Leigh in Streetcar Named Desire. “I did have one aunt who broke with tradition and enrolled at Wellesley. She never came back. We get a Christmas card from Boston every year from Aunt Mabel and her assortment of beagles.”

  Cued by the round of laughter, Gen entered the living room, and the women’s heads swiveled toward her. Ruby and Frances smiled encouragingly, while Mrs. Blakeney’s mouth flopped open.

  “Amanda, I hope you don’t mind,” Ruby said. “I invited Gen Rider to join us. You haven’t formally met, but you’ve heard quite a bit about each other.”

  Amanda shifted her cup and saucer to the table and rose to leave. She tugged at the sweater slung around her shoulders and held in place with a silver clasp.

  “Ruby, you surprise me. I wouldn’t have thought you capable of such a low trick. May I
have my wrap?”

  Ruby and Frances stood, too, but all of them remained frozen in place and speechless. Gen’s gaze circled from one to another but rested for the longest time on Amanda. She was a dead ringer for her daughter, a trim blonde with nails freshly painted a rich shade of cherry.

  “I’m sorry I upset you, Mrs. Blakeney,” Gen said. “Please don’t blame Ruby or Frances. The surprise meeting was my idea.”

  Amanda shot a glance toward the foyer, as if weighing how to make her escape. Yet she remained rooted in place like a trapped animal.

  “If you could hear me out,” Gen continued. “I have some information that might help your family.”

  Amanda thrust her chin forward. “You’ve given quite enough help to my family, thank you.”

  “Mrs. Blakeney—” Frances tried to intercede but was cut off.

  “And you two, Professor Palmer, Ruby—I’m amazed you associate with someone of such low character. This woman—who knows how many girls she’s scarred? She sets her cap for children!”

  “That is just not true,” Gen said.

  “You’re calling my daughter a liar? I didn’t raise a liar!”

  Gen’s hands curled into fists, and her breathing picked up speed. She wanted a drink of water but had to press on and not lose momentum.

  “Let’s say I think Lee-Anne has made up some stories. Not to be vicious, but because she’s scared and doesn’t know how to get out of the mess she’s in. I have reason to believe she—”

  Amanda raised a hand to stop her. “I don’t care what you have reason to believe. It’s clear you will say anything.”

  While Ruby accompanied Amanda to the door, Gen was left facing Frances, who didn’t seem to know where to look so she focused on the Persian rug. Gen heard murmurs in the foyer that she couldn’t make out and then the soft click of the front door.

  Ruby returned to the living room, her hands balled into fists.

  “It could have been worse,” Frances said. “She might come around and want to hear Gen’s side.”

  Ruby sighed. “She mentioned a restraining order.”

  Gen’s stomach twisted. Her naive idea that she might make things right if she could just talk to Mrs. Blakeney and lay out the facts had compounded the trouble. There was nothing to do now but call Ursula and put an end to the circus, follow Juliet’s lead, and get the hell out of town.

  ✥ ✥ ✥

  The hang-ups started again that night, right after she had heated the leftover chicken and dumplings Ruby offered her and set the meal on a plate. Eating felt like the only thing she could control.

  Gen struggled to chew a mouthful before answering. She expected Ursula’s voice on the other end. After the debacle at Ruby’s, she had called the attorney, who had registered shock at her decision to fold.

  “That doesn’t sound like you,” Ursula had said. “What’s happened?”

  Gen had ignored the question, not wanting to divulge the harebrained scheme to talk to her accuser’s mother.

  “I’ll check in later and see if you’ve changed your mind.”

  “I won’t.”

  But it wasn’t Ursula. A dial tone greeted Gen, and she returned to her meal. Her eyes drifted to the Carrs’ house, so dark and still except for a light in an upstairs window facing her bungalow.

  Within minutes, the ringing resumed, five, six, seven insistent counts. In mid-bite, Gen eyed the phone but let it whine until it stopped.

  While she was washing her dinner plate, the phone started again, droning on until she picked up the receiver.

  Gen didn’t bother with a greeting. “Who is this?”

  This time the mystery caller didn’t hang up, and through the wire Gen distinctly heard sniffling. She tried again in a more patient tone. “Why are you crying?”

  The female voice that replied was young, tremulous, unidentifiable. “I can’t stop.”

  Gen shut down her urge to play a guessing game, deciding it might only irritate the caller. Someone needed to talk to her, and she reasoned that her identity would soon come to light.

  The caller’s next words were so hushed, Gen couldn’t grab on to them. “I’m sorry, I missed what you just said.” She pressed the receiver to her ear until it hurt, wishing for a way to turn up the volume.

  “My mother—” The girl trailed off, but now Gen knew for sure.

  She kept her tone calm, although what she really wanted was to throttle the girl, demand to know why she was lying. “I’m sorry if I made things worse for you with your mother. I didn’t mean to.”

  Lee-Anne’s whispered question threw her. “Could you—could I talk to you . . . somewhere?”

  Heat rushed to Gen’s face. What kind of new game was she playing? “You can talk now, Lee-Anne. I’m listening.”

  More sniffles traveled through the line. “Someone could pick up downstairs.”

  In her head Gen heard Ursula’s stern warning: Do not engage with the girl. She lies through her teeth.

  “Given the situation, that’s not a good idea,” Gen replied. “I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea.”

  “I can’t . . . I don’t . . .” Lee-Anne’s crying turned into sobs and gulps. “Please.”

  Gen imagined the worst scenario: Mrs. Blakeney there in the room with her daughter, egging her on, setting a trap for Gen. She shook away the paranoid idea, something from a movie or novel and not real life.

  “I won’t meet with you unless you tell me what it’s about,” she said.

  Susanna Carr had already told Fenton, but Gen needed to hear it from the girl’s own mouth.

  The name sounded like the hiss of a snake.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Gen

  The frigid wind bit at Gen’s face as she trudged to Ruby’s house. Ruby had instructed her to walk, not drive, and to take the circuitous route through a copse of loblolly pines to the backyard. Gen had chuckled at the elaborate instructions, reminiscent of a spy thriller.

  Neighborhood children had worn a trail through the woods, and with the recent snowfall and the dappled light through the pines the route to Ruby’s rear door was magical. Gen so rarely walked anywhere. The only noise came from the crunch of her boots on frozen leaves and the trill of a solitary finch that apparently hadn’t flown farther south.

  As she approached Ruby’s house, Gen dove deeper into her knitted wool scarf, steeling herself for seeing Lee-Anne. In normal circumstances, meetings with students were routine, but so much rested on what Lee-Anne was willing to admit in front of Ruby.

  Behind her someone else’s feet crunched through the snow. Lee-Anne was bundled into a fur-trimmed white parka, the hood obscuring her face, and her hands were stuffed into the slash pockets. In leggings and red boots, she looked like a schoolkid dressed for a snow day.

  “My mother’s taking a bath,” she said. “I’ve got about thirty minutes.”

  In the mudroom, they peeled off their layers of winter wear. “The family room’s nice and toasty,” Ruby said, motioning to a dark, narrow hallway Gen had never seen before—at one time, a passage for servants, she guessed. In fact, as long as she’d known Ruby, which seemed like forever, Gen had never entered through this part of the house.

  Lee-Anne plopped onto the sofa, and Ruby handed her a crocheted afghan as she took a seat next to her. Gen faced them in a separate chair, the distance making her feel like an interrogator.

  With a reddened hand, the girl reached for the cocoa Ruby had set out and cradled it in her hands. Without makeup or barrettes, without a flouncy skirt and matching sweater set, Lee-Anne seemed much younger than her nineteen years.

  Minutes ticked by in silence. Gen reminded herself that Lee-Anne had requested this meeting, and she should let the girl lead. Still, the matter of time pressed in on her.

  “Why don’t you start, Lee-Anne?” Gen said. “You wanted to speak to me about something.”

  Lee-Anne sipped noisily at her cocoa. “I didn’t know you’d be here, too, Dr. Woods. I though
t we were just meeting in your house.”

  Gen cast a wide-eyed glance at Ruby, a frantic signal of Don’t leave me!

  “I didn’t think you’d mind,” Ruby said, her focus shifting to Lee-Anne. “Why, we’re old friends. I’ve known you since you were tiny.”

  Lee-Anne’s face relaxed into a smile. She tucked her stockinged feet up under her on the sofa.

  “Now, you’ve been saying some things about Dr. Rider,” Ruby said to urge her on.

  The girl nodded in a choppy way. “I didn’t mean for it to go this far.” Her blue eyes misted over. “I told . . . him about that one time, and he blew it out of proportion. He pressed and pressed—” Her fists tightened around her mug of cocoa.

  “You mean Dr. Thoms?”

  Her head jerked again.

  “And what was the one time?” Gen probed. “I seem to have made you uncomfortable without even realizing it.”

  Lee-Anne shrugged but then offered the answer. “Halloween.” The word came out with a burble. “I was putting my shoe on, and I saw you looked—”

  Gen sifted through her memories to the day when she saw Lee-Anne emerging from Thoms’s office, disheveled and flummoxed. She thought she recalled asking if the girl was all right and remarking on her costume. But what had she done other than that?

  “—at my leg!” Lee-Anne finished with a sob, and Gen let out a loud breath.

  Ruby leaned away from Lee-Anne and crossed her arms across her chest. “That’s what this is about? My God—”

  Gen caught Ruby’s eye and wagged her head once. Please don’t antagonize her, she hoped the gesture said.

  Lee-Anne sniffled and went on in her piecemeal style. “We all heard you might be, you know. I always said no, you’re too pretty, but there’s no men . . . and Margaret—”

  Gen flinched. “Lee-Anne, do you know anything about some gifts I got this fall?”

  Sobs erupted out of the girl. “I didn’t think things would—”

  Ruby pried the mug from Lee-Anne’s shaking hands and passed her the tissue box from the coffee table. The girl crushed it against her like a teddy bear.