Galveston (68 page)

“I was just wondering …”

“What?”

“Who named me Willa?”

Chapter 13

We arrived in Galveston early in the afternoon on Christmas Day.

I had had the curious feeling, as we finally left the school building, that I would not see a car in the garage, but a rig with a horse somewhere near, waiting to be harnessed and snorting the cold air from his nostrils. In the space of a few hours, the story of my mother and father and their world had become more real than the present one. I was like two people rather than one. All my history began and ended twenty years before. The Willa of then, and the Willa of now, seemed independent of each other.

The car which appeared as James pulled open two big wooden garage doors brought me back to reality with a jolt. I would have expected, I suppose, something on the order of Henry Pickett's old Dodge, to carry us rattling along between there and Galveston.

James's new black Packard, its chrome parts gleaming under the light above the garage, was, he said almost apologetically, “My only affordable luxury. I love anything well built, and this car is a sheer joy to own.” He ran a gloved hand lightly along one fender. “I saved for a long time to buy it, and wouldn't give it up for any amount of money.”

“It's funny, but my father—Frazier—can afford any kind of car he wants, year after year, and none of them seems to mean anything special to him except when they're giving trouble. Then he becomes boiling mad.”

“Guess it's a built-in bonus of being poor. Everything you get means more.”

“Yes, I'd never thought of that. But since I left home with a limited amount of cash, I have learned something about economizing. It's been kind of fun, really.”

“Imagine, budgeting a lark. Oh, dear girl, you haven't had it as bad as you think.”

Somehow, when
he
pointed out the obvious, I didn't mind.

I am glad now we went together to Galveston, rather than my having gone alone. As the big Packard smoothly took the awful roads across the prairie, then coasted down into the hilly country before any sign of snow appeared, James first listened attentively as I poured out all my feelings about my life with the Fraziers, and my ill-fated romance with Rodney Younger, then said simply, “Yes, I see,” and drove on silently for a while. Then he began remembering bits and pieces of information he'd forgotten to tell me earlier as we sat across from each other in his office.

“Did I tell you that Claire's first love—Damon Becker—was killed at sea a few months after Claire married Charles? From what I could gather by the things she told me that summer, he must have been the adventurer of the two brothers—you know, dashingly handsome, exciting, all that.”

“And he never knew Claire was carrying his child. Well, at least my father died with the knowledge that I was on the way. I guess that's something. And you said Claire's infant died at about four months?”

“That's what Claire said that summer, although I didn't learn until the end that the son she was referring to wasn't Charles's.”

“I wonder … could her lost love for Damon Becker have been part of the basis for her first attraction to Professor King? Maybe the Professor was a combination of the two men she could never have.”

“That makes a lot of sense. I'd be willing to bet you hit it right on the nose.”

“I wish I knew more about Charles. He must have been quite a man, my grandfather. I mean, on the surface so upstanding, and underneath a man driven by a passion for a woman he couldn't have. Wow!”

“Yes. I never knew him, of course, only saw one or two photos of him that Claire kept around. He was distinguished-looking, with good precise features, a Vandyke beard. He was a lawyer, and looked it. And apparently pretty smart. In that stack of letters Claire wrote to Helga, there was a newspaper clipping enclosed with one which had been published right after his candidacy for mayor was announced. Wish I'd kept that clipping—Helga probably wouldn't have minded—it told all about his platform. His ideas for Galveston were quite innovative for the time, and he certainly had at least the Galveston
News
pulling for him. He wanted to split up the Wharf Company monopoly, and get better services for shippers using the port. And he wanted to go to the mainland for water supply—you know, the supply on the island was already proving inadequate, although many thought if they dug enough artesian wells they'd do just fine without the help of the mainlanders.

“At least his dream on that came true—water is piped in from Alta Loma nowadays. His other dream never quite worked out.”

“What was that?”

“The Wharf monopoly. The thing never has been busted—I understand they're still squabbling with the city about selling the remaining stock held by the corporation—but of course it looks as though it doesn't matter much. The race between Houston and Galveston for the number one port is all but finished, as I see it, in favor of Houston.”

“Now you're talking like my father Frazier, although some argue his judgment is a bit premature. After all, the Galveston harbor is still deeper, still has a far bigger trade.”

“It's petroleum—your dad's own game—that's going to make the difference. Now that they've discovered the wonder of the internal combustion engine, the demand for petroleum will never stop growing, mark my word. Houston is the obvious place for refineries because there's plenty of room.”

“I guess it was purely academic, then, the question of whether Charles's winning the mayor's race so long ago would have helped.”

“It was purely academic from the time that hurricane blew the island to pieces, at least to my mind. Even with the seawall, the island is too exposed to nature's whippings for anyone to be willing to chance putting big money there. Houston is much safer, yet still has access to the Gulf, and in a short while their channel will reach the depth of Galveston's. Isn't there a proposal before Congress now, for deepening it to thirty feet?”

“Yes. My father has reams of paper about it stacked around his office. And you seem to keep up with events in our part of the state pretty well.”

He laughed. “Yes, even isolated schoolmasters occasionally read about goings-on in the outside world. There's little going on in the Grady area, so the
Star
and the Greenwood
Monitor
both draw heavily on news from other parts of the state, just to fill the pages.”

“You know, I find myself constantly wondering what if this and what if that. For instance, what if Charles and Ruth—I feel I should call her Grandmother in a way, and yet she died so young—what if they had run away when she was expecting Serena, and he had divorced Claire, married her. That would have changed everything.”

“Yes, but it's likely Betsey—my mother's mother—intervened. Remember, she and Claire were very close. Of course it seems odd she would have allowed the conspiracy to go on either … I guess we'll never know what her feelings were. Maybe she didn't even know about the Garrets, was told some other family unknown to any of them adopted Charles's and Mother's child …”

“Yes, and what if, things happening up to a point as they did, my father would not have been killed, but would have saved himself and Serena, and you. Why, you and I might have grown up alongside each other, maybe even in New York. Just think.”

“No, I doubt they'd have ever attained custody of me. Remember, they'd have been scorned for their sins.”

“Poor James. You've grown up as lonely as I have, and with far more reason.”

“Loneliness is a state of mind, I've found. Willa, are you sorry now you opened up this Pandora's box?”

“No, I've lived a lifetime wondering and it's time I had some answers.”

The Tracy house on Avenue O in Galveston suggested only modest wealth. It was three-storied, with the inevitable big verandah and deep windows, the steep stairs and lattice-covered stilts. The house was painted a kind of murky green, with white trim, and it reminded me of the Heights house on a smaller scale, before the application of white paint and blue trim.

I hadn't thought much about Rodney for what seemed weeks, though it was a matter of days, and as we sat out front of the Tracy house while James double-checked the address, I knew I did miss him. Poor Rodney, meeting up with a screwball like me. What had he ever done to deserve that?

The door was answered by a towheaded, blue-eyed boy about ten years old. From the moment the door swung open I felt a friendliness in the house, a Christmas atmosphere that comes only to a close family group. There were high-spirited voices in the background, children frolicking somewhere with their new toys. The mingled fragrances of roast turkey and mince pie and coffee wafted out at us.

“May I help you?” the boy asked in grown-up tones.

“I'm James Byron. I talked with your uncle Roy day before yesterday. Did he tell your mother about me?”

She was coming now, a woman of forty or so whose beauty had mellowed with age, her hair, pulled back into a soft bun, beginning to streak with gray. “James, how marvelous to see you.” She took his hands like a long-lost friend, then looked across as he introduced me.

“So, it's true,” she said. “I never really believed she drowned, but to think there was a child into the bargain that summer. When Roy told me you'd called, I had a feeling … Come in, come in.”

“Beautiful day for Christmas,” said James.

“Yes, but the wind is so chilling off the water, just as always. That's why I wear this shawl most of the time. There's a fire in the parlor. Coffee and fruitcake?”

“Wonderful,” said James. Neither of us had eaten since stopping in Sandersburg for breakfast early that morning.

“She seemed unsurprised,” I said after Marybeth left the room.

“Yes, but apparently she isn't the one.”

She was back in a few minutes, bearing a tray of fine, delicate china and linen cloths. “My husband has gone across town to take his parents home. They'd spent the night last night and eaten dinner with us today. He'll be back shortly.”

“It's time you were told exactly what did happen the day Serena was supposed to have been killed,” said James, and I leaned back in the chair and sipped coffee as he spun the tale for Marybeth …

“I'm looking for my mother now,” I said when he was finished, suddenly weary of getting there all the time yet never arriving. “We felt that I'm evidence enough she might be alive today, and we thought you might be the one responsible for getting her to safety that day of the fire.”

“Me? Of course not. I wasn't even back from Europe, didn't arrive until a week later, just as I told James when we talked.”

“I simply thought you might have been trying to protect her then,” said James. “It would certainly have been understandable.”

“I would have. She was such a timid little thing and I was, well, shall we say I'd sowed my share of the wild oats by the time it all happened? I was thrilled to learn from her letters she had met this dashing young man … wish I'd saved those letters, and I could give them to you, Willa. You know, in those days little things seemed so unimportant. Anyway, I'd have done anything in my power to have been at hand to help her. I've regretted all these years I got back a week too late to save her. Of course, someone did, or she went off alone, which I doubt, because it wasn't like her.”

“We've already called Nick Weaver, from Grady, and he denied knowing anything.”

“Nick? Oh yes, the organ player that I loathed. He was all wrong for her, you know. She knew it too, but before that summer hadn't the courage to break away.”

“Serena's courage was reborn in Willa here, who's left family and fiancé literally standing at the altar so she could trace down her past.”

“But how did you get an inkling?”

“Her carpetbag. My adopted parents saved it all these years. I found it on the eve of my wedding a couple of eons ago, or so it seems.”

“Oh, I see. That's good. It's always better to do as you want, then you have no regrets,” she said, then took a sip of coffee and leaned back in her chair. “That was the trouble in those days. It was hard to break away. The social pressures were incredible on a young woman. She was expected to be a perfect, unblemished angel, to marry a fine man and raise her quota of children.

“Well, I eventually came round to my fine man, and had my children, but I can tell you one thing. I did it when I was good and ready, and not before. I always tried to get Serena to break out of the shackles, but she wouldn't. Then she up and did it that summer while I was gone. I was so proud of her.”

I liked this person Marybeth. She had spirit. Had she had a background like mine, she would've proceeded in just the same manner as I was right now.

“Well, I hope you find her, though I doubt it seriously at this point. I believe I would have heard from her eventually. As for Nick, I can't see him helping Serena in such a clandestine situation, can you, James? I mean, he was so damned self-righteous. He would have just as soon betrayed her to Father Garret as to have taken the chance on committing a sin himself, wouldn't he?”

“Seems likely, only he was quite fond of her. Maybe he softened just a little when she was in trouble. He wasn't entirely hopeless as a person, I don't imagine.”

She frowned. “Maybe not. Why don't you look him up since you're here anyway, and do a little prodding. He may know more than he lets on. It's easy enough to put someone off from several hundred miles away on the telephone. He might not find it so easy if you approach him face to face.”

“You may have a point there,” said James.

“Wish I could think of someone else … Maybe our dancing teacher, Madame D'Arcy.”

“I doubt it. Serena had had to quit lessons because her father had gotten behind in paying the bills. She was terribly embarrassed, and couldn't face Madame.”