Charlotte’s Story (17 page)

When she tried to take my arm, I moved away. Maybe it was the brandy that made me want to fight the dreadful longing that filled me when I looked at the skater’s dress. I only knew that I had to go inside.

Rachel let me go, but didn’t follow.

The woman behind the counter was making price tags, and looked up and smiled automatically. I knew her. When she saw who I was, her smile slipped just a bit. She’d met Eva when I’d brought her shopping.

“Mrs. Bliss. It’s so nice to see you.”

Don’t ask about her. Don’t mention her name.

“What can I help you with today?” Her voice was artificially bright. Did she see something in my face?
This is what a murderer might look like.

I glanced around the store, knowing I’d made a mistake in coming in. I wasn’t ready to be there, but it was too late to turn and go. My eyes passed quickly over the boys’ clothes. My palms had begun to sweat. Now I had to buy something to prove to us both that I could be here. To prove that I wasn’t guilty.

“Picture books. I need picture books.” My need for them was sudden and desperate, and I hurried over to the book display. The saleswoman’s heels clicked over the varnished hardwood floor as she tried to keep pace.

“We have some new ones coming in a few weeks for Christmas. Here’s one about construction that has lots of trucks and building equipment.” Her hand hovered over the table, searching. So she remembered Michael, though I hadn’t ever brought him in to the shop. “And there’s a new Beatrix Potter edition as well.” Picking up the oversize anthology of the Potter stories, she held it out to me and I thumbed through it, not really looking at the pictures. I knew them already. Eva had been fascinated by Mrs. Tiggywinkle, certain that she needed to have her own hedgehog as soon as possible. She had even asked Nonie if she could find a helpful hedgehog like Mrs. Tiggywinkle to fill in for her when she went on vacation. I closed it and handed it back to her. It wouldn’t hurt for Michael to have his own copy, and the pictures were a good size to work from if I decided to decorate the walls of the ballroom when we renovated it.

“This is fine. And you have the truck book?”

She held up a second oversized book called
Things We Build
, with a bulldozer on the front.

“I’ll take them both.” I looked around. “And this.” I picked up a large snowy lamb with a yellow ribbon around its neck from a nursery-rhymes display.

When the books were wrapped in paper and tied with a ribbon bearing the hotel’s name, she slid the sales ticket across the desk. I felt her watching me as I wrote down our account number and signed. Did she see my hand shaking? I made myself write slowly, neatly. When I was done, it looked as though someone else had forged my signature.

“Oh, do you want the lamb in a box? I’m so sorry. I forgot to ask.”

“No. Just let me have it.”

“Are we done? I’m famished.” Rachel had finally appeared. Even though she was due any day, she hadn’t picked up anything for the baby. Sometimes I wondered just how happy she was about the pregnancy. Now she came up behind me. “What did you get?”

I held the lamb out to her, forcing myself to smile. “For the baby.”

She looked as though she didn’t understand for a moment, then gave me a sweet, slightly patronizing smile in return.

“You are the silliest person, Charlotte. We can’t take that to lunch with us. But you’re a dear.” She touched my arm to bring me closer and, lifting herself to her full height, bussed my cheek. Taking the lamb, she gave it back to the saleswoman. “Wrap it up and have it put in my car with her other things.”

She took my hand and led me from the shop.

I was tired and feeling as though I might cry at any moment. “Maybe we should just go home.” Without the lamb, my arms felt strangely empty.

“You’re joking!” Now she took my arm instead of just my hand. “I’m starving to death, and we’re not leaving here until we get something decent to eat.”

We ate down the hill at the hotel’s Racquet Club café rather than in the massive formal dining room. The café was friendlier and more relaxed, with waitresses in white dresses and aprons instead of men in formal livery as in the dining room.

My head had begun to hurt a little and the sun streamed bright around our table, which was right beside a pair of open French doors. There were several sets of women’s doubles going on the nearby tennis courts, and a man and woman playing alone on the most distant one.

Our waitress, a bubbly young woman whose dark ponytail looked as though it would burst from its bun at any moment, set down a glass of brandy and a separate club soda for Rachel, and an iced tea for me.

“Why did you just get iced tea?” she asked, after the waitress left the table. “Are you mad because I didn’t get all gooey over that dear lamb you bought? I only wanted a day away from all the baby talk. Jack won’t shut up about it.” She sighed. “You’d think he invented babies.”

“I’m not mad. I just haven’t understood why you’re not more excited. I loved being pregnant.”

“That’s fine for you. But listen to this: Jack doesn’t even want me—” she stopped, closing her eyes for a few seconds and taking a deep breath. “Jack doesn’t particularly want me having sex with the baby inside me. How stupid is that? He’s afraid it will know what’s going on, or something.”

I remember thinking how strange it was that Jack would have that concern, given that he was a doctor. Self-conscious about how many times Press and I had had sex with both of my pregnancies, I didn’t respond.

“I bet that doesn’t stop Press.” Rachel leaned forward, whispering. “He’s not afraid of anything, is he?”

“Rachel!”

She gave me a knowing smile. “Come on. You can tell
me
.”

When I wouldn’t tell her what she wanted to know, she launched into a litany of what clothes she would buy once she was back down to what she called a
normal
size. From there she complained about her mother’s obsession with the baby. I waited, but she never brought up the Heasters. It was as though they had never existed. Nonie had come close to calling Rachel outright selfish many times. I couldn’t, because she was one of the few people I loved and trusted.

I’d been unable to hold on to the small sense of happiness I’d had in the car, but Rachel’s chatter made it easy for me to just sit and be glad of the sunshine.

Finally the waitress brought our order, and I moved the subject away from babies and bodily functions.

“A while ago, I had this idea. It might sound a little crazy.”

“If you want me to stop you from doing something crazy, you’re talking to the wrong person. You know that.” Rachel took a large, unladylike bite of her club sandwich. Her brandy was gone, and I suspected she was a bit drunk.

“Well, I read this piece in
Harper’s Bazaar
about how people are transforming all those big old mansions in New York into more family-friendly houses. You know, modernizing them.”

“And you want to change Bliss House into apartments?”

“No. But one family turned a ballroom into a giant playroom. Children can ride bikes inside, or they can use pogo sticks or roller-skate. One ballroom was even big enough to have a bowling alley installed. And, of course, most of them don’t have any windows, so they don’t get broken. I wonder why that is.”

She shook her head. “I can’t see Press wanting to do that. He’s already redoing the theater, right? I’m not going to be stuck out with the bugs in my barn forever. He promised! And the idea of
roller-skating and whatnot in a ballroom—particularly
that
creepy ballroom—is a little weird, Charlotte. You know Press got himself locked in there for hours once when he was a boy? He never told me what really happened, but it shook him up.”

Press had told me about being locked in the ballroom, but he’d made it sound like a joke. I didn’t think Rachel knew what she was talking about.

“Well, it really is partly my ballroom, too.”

“Maybe.” Rachel sounded doubtful. “What about Olivia? Since she’s come back, don’t you think she’ll be pissed off?” Now she had a look of mischief in her eyes.

“No, I don’t.” I’d begun to feel that the Olivia I was coming to know probably wouldn’t have minded whatever I wanted to do with the house.

The café had become more crowded. One of the doubles teams had been seated, and the rest of the patrons looked to have just come off the golf course. It was almost two o’clock. Michael would be going down for his nap.
And Eva should be telling Nonie she was too old to nap, that big girls should be allowed to stay up and play.

We stopped discussing the house and had moved on to town gossip, a much safer topic. Finally, Rachel told me that the Heasters’ nephew had shown up out of the blue with an appraiser, and then movers, to clear out the house.

“I had no idea. Did you even talk to him?”

Rachel shook her head. “Press said he talked to him on the telephone, and that he didn’t think he’d be back for the memorial. There’s just something wrong with some families.”

A pair of shadows fell across the table. “What families?”

Rachel and I looked up to see Press—in tennis whites, his tan face and arms shining with a thin sheen of perspiration—with a woman standing close beside him.

He put his hand on my shoulder and kissed the top of my head.

“What a nice surprise, darling! Ladies, you remember J.C., don’t you?”

J. C. Jacquith was as tall as I remembered, and skeleton-thin. She was more deeply tanned than even Press and had her chin-length ebony black hair (last time I’d seen her, her hair had been yellow-blonde) pulled back with a white eyelet band that matched the placket on her blouse. Instead of a traditional white tennis skirt, she wore high-waisted shorts that ended only five or six inches down her thin but muscular thighs. Was she ten, perhaps twelve years older than Press? I wasn’t sure. Her nose and lips were patrician-thin, but her eyes—above her precipitous cheekbones—were large, the shocking gold color of a big cat’s.

“Is there room for us, girls?” J.C.’s drawl was low and slightly nasal. “I’m desperate for a cold drink. Preston ran me ragged during that last set. I think I even perspired a little.” She gave a laugh that might have been meant to be a giggle, but she had no facility for giggling. Her voice was nearly as deep as a man’s.

Press signaled for the waitress to set two more places at the table, and pulled out the chair closest to him for J.C. to sit down. He also handed her the fine white cardigan that he’d obviously been carrying for her and obliged when she asked him to put it around her shoulders. As exhausted as she said she was, she’d found time to apply a fresh layer of thick, shining red lipstick.

“All these fans.” She waved a hand toward the ceiling. “I get absolutely chilled. Don’t you?” She was looking at Rachel, who looked back at her with obvious distaste. When Rachel didn’t respond, I jumped in.

“It’s been very pleasant this afternoon.”

Rachel’s gaze shifted to Press, who was seating himself in the fourth chair. Finally she spoke.

“I had
no idea
you were going to be here, Press, you naughty thing.” She looked at me. “Did you know?”

I shook my head.
No, I hadn’t known.

Press surprised us all when he turned to me and said “Darling, I told you. You must have forgotten.”

“You didn’t.” When had he said something? We’d barely spoken in days. “I would have remembered.”

“There’s no need to get upset, darling. It’s not important.”

Rachel and J.C. looked at me, each with something dangerously close to pity in their eyes. I wanted to run from the room.

J.C. laughed, breaking the moment. “I’m just thrilled that I get to see Precious Bride again, Press. You keep her hidden away down at that house of yours. He should let you out more, darling. You’re absolutely delicious.” She was staring at me with those fierce gold eyes, and I suddenly had an image of her biting into me—my arm, my cheek—licking me to tenderize me first, like a real cat with her prey.

“You know I haven’t been hiding her. We’ve had a difficult few months.” Press lightly touched my hand as if to emphasize the gravity of his words. “By tomorrow afternoon you’ll be down in Old Gate with us.”

The afternoon had taken a bizarre turn, and I deeply regretted leaving Bliss House. I thought of the security of the morning room, the warm mohair blanket.

The waitress stood waiting quietly by the table, and we were interrupted for a few moments. Rachel ordered a second drink, but this time just a plain club soda.

When the waitress was gone, J.C. turned her gaze toward Rachel. Rachel, who was always the center of attention in every room she entered, now looked tiny and insignificant. It was as though she were the moon, and J. C. Jacquith were the sun, which had decided to descend from the sky, flaming everything in its path.

“We’ve met before, haven’t we?” J.C. held out her hand to Rachel. “I’m thinking your name is Roberta? Or perhaps Ruth?” She turned to Press and smiled. “You’d think I’d be better with names, wouldn’t you, with my job. I mean, it’s my lifeblood,
making sure I remember who people are.” She turned back to Rachel expectantly.