Come Along with Me (21 page)

She looked at me hard and then stepped back and my mother and father were standing there, waiting for me to come in. If I had not stopped to think I would have run to them, but I hesitated, not quite sure what to do, or whether they were angry with me, or hurt, or only just happy that I was back, and of course once I stopped to think about it all I could find to do was just stand there and say “Mother?” kind of uncertainly.

She came over to me and put her hands on my shoulders and looked into my face for a long time. There were tears running down her cheeks and I thought that before, when it didn't matter, I had been ready enough to cry, but now, when crying would make me look better, all I wanted to do was giggle. She looked old, and sad, and I felt simply foolish. Then she turned to Paul and said, “Oh,
Paul
—how can you do this to me again?”

Paul was frightened; I could see it. “Mrs. Tether—” he said.

“What is your name, dear?” my mother asked me.

“Louisa Tether,” I said stupidly.

“No, dear,” she said, very gently, “your
real
name?”

Now I could cry, but now I did not think it was going to help matters any. “Louisa Tether,” I said. “That's my name.”

“Why don't you people leave us alone?” Carol said; she was white, and shaking, and almost screaming because she was so angry. “We've spent years and years trying to find my lost sister and all people like you see in it is a chance to cheat us out of the reward—doesn't it mean
any
thing to you that
you
may think you have a chance for some easy money, but
we
just get hurt and heartbroken all over again? Why don't you leave us
alone
?”

“Carol,” my father said, “you're frightening the poor child. Young lady,” he said to me, “I honestly believe that you did not realize the cruelty of what you tried to do. You look like a nice girl; try to imagine your own mother—”

I tried to imagine my own mother; I looked straight at her.

“—if someone took advantage of her like this. I am sure you were not told that twice before, this young man—” I stopped looking at my mother and looked at Paul—“has brought us young girls who pretended to be our lost daughter; each time he protested that he had been genuinely deceived and had no thought of profit, and each time we hoped desperately that it would be the right girl. The first time we were taken in for several days. The girl
looked
like our Louisa, she
acted
like our Louisa, she knew all kinds of small family jokes and happenings it seemed impossible that anyone
but
Louisa could know, and yet she was an imposter. And the girl's mother—my wife—has suffered more each time her hopes have been raised.” He put his arm around my mother—his wife—and with Carol they stood all together looking at me.

“Look,” Paul said wildly, “give her a
chance
—she
knows
she's Louisa. At least give her a chance to
prove
it.”

“How?” Carol asked. “I'm sure if I asked her something like—well—like what was the color of the dress she was supposed to wear at my wedding—”

“It was pink,” I said. “I wanted blue but you said it had to be pink.”

“I'm sure she'd know the answer,” Carol went on as though I hadn't said anything. “The other girls you brought here, Paul—
they
both knew.”

It wasn't going to be any good. I ought to have known it. Maybe they were so used to looking for me by now that they would rather keep on looking than have me home; maybe once my mother had looked in my face and seen there nothing of Louisa, but only the long careful concentration I had put into being Lois Taylor, there was never any chance of my looking like Louisa again.

I felt kind of sorry for Paul; he had never understood them as well as I did and he clearly felt there was still some chance of talking them into opening their arms and crying out “Louisa! Our long-lost daughter!” and then turning around and handing him the reward; after that, we could all live happily ever after. While Paul was still trying to argue with my father I walked over a little way and looked into the living room again; I figured I wasn't going to have much time to look around and I wanted one last glimpse to take away with me; sister Carol kept a good eye on me all the time, too.
I
wondered what the two girls before me had tried to steal, and I wanted to tell her that if
I
ever planned to steal anything from that house I was three years too late; I could have taken whatever I wanted when I left the first time. There was nothing there I could take now, any more than there had been before. I realized that all I wanted was to stay—I wanted to stay so much that I felt like hanging onto the stair rail and screaming, but even though a temper tantrum might bring them some fleeting recollection of their dear lost Louisa I hardly thought it would persuade them to invite me to stay. I could just picture myself being dragged kicking and screaming out of my own house.

“Such a lovely old house,” I said politely to my sister Carol, who was hovering around me.

“Our family has lived here for generations,” she said, just as politely.

“Such beautiful furniture,” I said.

“My mother is fond of antiques.”

“Fingerprints,” Paul was shouting. We were going to get a lawyer, I gathered, or at least Paul thought we were going to get a lawyer and I wondered how he was going to feel when he found out that we weren't. I couldn't imagine any lawyer in the world who could get my mother and my father and my sister Carol to take me back when they had made up their minds that I was not Louisa; could the law make my mother look into my face and recognize me?

I thought that there ought to be some way I could make Paul see that there was nothing we could do, and I came over and stood next to him. “Paul,” I said, “can't you see that you're only making Mr. Tether angry?”

“Correct, young woman,” my father said, and nodded at me to show that he thought I was being a sensible creature. “He's not doing himself any good by threatening me.”

“Paul,” I said, “these people don't want us here.”

Paul started to say something and then for the first time in his life thought better of it and stamped off toward the door. When I turned to follow him—thinking that we'd never gotten past the front hall in my great homecoming—my father—excuse me, Mr. Tether—came up behind me and took my hand. “My daughter was younger than you are,” he said to me very kindly, “but I'm sure you have a family somewhere who love you and want you to be happy. Go back to them, young lady. Let me advise you as though I were really your father—stay away from that fellow, he's wicked and he's worthless. Go back home where you belong.”

“We know what it's like for a family to worry and wonder about a daughter,” my mother said. “Go back to the people who love you.”

That meant Mrs. Peacock, I guess.

“Just to make sure you get there,” my father said, “let us help toward your fare.” I tried to take my hand away, but he put a folded bill into it and I had to take it. “I hope someday,” he said, “that someone will do as much for our Louisa.”

“Good-by, my dear,” my mother said, and she reached up and patted my cheek. “Very good luck to you.”

“I hope your daughter comes back someday,” I told them. “Good-by.”

 * * * 

The bill was a twenty, and I gave it to Paul. It seemed little enough for all the trouble he had taken and, after all, I could go back to my job in the stationery store. My mother still talks to me on the radio, once a year, on the anniversary of the day I ran away.

“Louisa,” she says, “Please come home. We all want our dear girl back, and we need you and miss you so much. Your mother and father love you and will never forget you. Louisa, please come home.”

[
1960
]

THE LITTLE HOUSE

I'll have to get some decent lights, was her first thought, and her second:
and
a dog or something, or at least a bird, anything
alive
. She stood in the little hall beside her suitcase, in a little house that belonged to her, her first home. She held the front-door key in her hand, and she knew, remembering her aunt, that the back-door key hung, labeled, from a hook beside the back door, and the side-door key hung from a hook beside the side door, and the porch-door key hung from a hook beside the porch door, and the cellar-door key hung from a hook beside the cellar-door, and perhaps when she slammed the front door behind her all the keys swung gently, once, back and forth. Anything that can move and make some kind of a friendly noise, she thought, maybe a monkey or a cat or anything not stuffed—as she realized that she was staring, hypnotized, at the moose head over the hall mirror.

Wanting to make some kind of a noise in the silence, she coughed, and the small sound moved dustily into the darkness of the house. Well, I'm here, she told herself, and it belongs to me and I can do anything I want here and no one can ever make me leave, because it's mine. She moved to touch the carved newel post at the foot of the narrow stairway—it was hers, it belonged to her—and felt a sudden joy at the tangible reality of the little house; this is really something to own, she thought, thank you, Aunt. And my goodness, she thought, brushing her hand, couldn't my very own house do with a little dusting; she smiled to herself at the prospect of the very pleasant work she would do tomorrow and the day after, and for all the days after that, living in her house and keeping it clean and fresh.

Wanting to whistle, to do something to bring noise and movement into the house, she turned and opened the door on her right and stepped into the dim crowded parlor. I wish I didn't have to see it first at dusk, she thought, Aunt certainly didn't believe in bright light; I wonder how she ever found her way around this room. A dim shape on a low table beside the door resolved itself into a squat lamp; when she pressed the switch a low radiance came into the room and she was able to leave the spot by the door and venture into what had clearly been her aunt's favorite room. The parlor had certainly not been touched, or even opened or lighted, since her aunt's death; a tea towel, half-hemmed, lay on the arm of a chair, and she felt a sudden tenderness and a half-shame at the thought of the numbers of tea towels, hemmed, which had come to her at birthdays and Christmases over the years and now lay still in their tissue paper, at the bottom of her trunk still at the railroad station. At least I'll use her towels now, in her own house, she thought, and then: but it's my house now. She would stack the tea towels neatly in the linen closet, she might even finish hemming this one, and she took it up and folded it neatly, leaving the needle still tucked in where her aunt had left it, to await the time when she should sit quietly in her chair, in her parlor in her house, and take up her sewing. Her aunt's glasses lay on the table; had her aunt put down her sewing and taken off her glasses at the very end? Prepared, neatly, to die?

Don't think about it, she told herself sternly, she's gone now, and soon the house will be busy again; I'll clear away tomorrow, when it's not so dark; how did she ever manage to sew in here with this light? She put the half-hemmed towel over the glasses to hide them, and took up a little picture in a silver frame; her aunt, she recognized, and some smiling woman friend, standing together under trees; this must have been important to Aunt, she thought, I'll put it away safely somewhere. The house was distantly familiar to her; she had come here sometimes as a child, but that was long ago, and the memories of the house and her aunt were overlaid with cynicism and melancholy and the wearying disappointments of many years; perhaps it was the longing to return to the laughter of childhood which had brought her here so eagerly to take up her inheritance. The music box was in the corner where it had always been and, touching it gently, she brought from it one remote, faintly sweet, jangle of a note. Tomorrow I'll play the music box, she promised herself, with the windows wide open and the good fresh air blowing through and all the bric-a-brac safely stowed away in the attic; this could be such a pretty room—and she turned, her head to one side, considering—once I take out the junk and the clutter. I can keep the old couch and maybe have it recovered in something colorful, and the big chair can stay, and perhaps one or two of these tiny tables; the mantel is fine, and I'll keep a bowl of flowers there, flowers from my own garden. I'll have a great fire in the fireplace and I'll sit here with my dog and my needlework—and two or three good floor lamps; I'll get those tomorrow—and never be unhappy again. Tomorrow, lamps, and air the room, and play the music box.

Leaving a dim trail of lighted lamps behind her, she went from the parlor through a little sunporch where a magazine lay open on the table; Aunt never finished the story she was reading, she thought, and closed the magazine quickly and set it in order on the pile on the table; I'll subscribe to magazines, she thought, and the local newspaper, and take books from the village library. From the sunporch she went into the kitchen and remembered to turn on the light by pulling the cord hanging from the middle of the ceiling; her aunt had left a tomato ripening on the window sill, and it scented the kitchen with a strong air of decay. She shivered, and realized that the back door was standing open, and remembered her aunt saying, as clearly as though she heard it now, “Darn that door, I wish I could remember to get that latch looked at.”

And now I have to do it for her, she thought; I'll get a man in the morning. She found a paper bag in the pantry drawer where paper bags had always been kept, and scraped the rotten tomato from the window sill and carried the bag to the garbage pail by the back steps. When she came back she slammed the back door correctly and the latch caught; the key was hanging where she knew it had been, beside the door, and she took it down and locked the door; I'm alone in the house, after all, she thought with a little chill touching the back of her neck.

The cup from which her aunt had drunk her last cup of tea lay, washed and long since drained dry, beside the sink; perhaps she put her sewing down, she thought, and came to the kitchen to make a cup of tea before going to bed; I wonder where they found her; she always had a cup of tea at night, all alone; I wish I had come to see her at least once. The lovely old dishes are mine now, she thought, the family dishes and the cut glass and the silver tea service. Her aunt's sweater hung from the knob of the cellar door, as though she had only just this minute taken it off, and her apron hung from a hook beside the sink. Aunt always put things away, she thought, and she never came back for her sweater. She remembered dainty little hand-embroidered aprons in the hall chest, and thought of herself, aproned, serving a charming tea from the old tea service, using the thin painted cups, perhaps to neighbors who had come to see her delightful, open, light, little house; I must have a cocktail party too, she thought; I'll bet there's nothing in the house but dandelion wine.

It would seem strange at first, coming downstairs in the morning to make herself breakfast in her aunt's kitchen, and she suddenly remembered herself, very small, eating oatmeal at the kitchen table; it would seem strange to be using her aunt's dishes, and the big old coffeepot—although perhaps not the coffeepot, she thought; it had the look of something crotchety and temperamental, not willing to submit docilely to a strange hand; I'll have tea tomorrow morning, and get a new little coffeepot just for me. Lamps, coffeepot, man to fix the latch.

After a moment's thought she took her aunt's sweater and apron and bundled them together and carried them out to the garbage pail. It isn't as though they were any good to anyone, she told herself reassuringly;
all
her clothes will have to be thrown away, and she pictured herself standing in her bright parlor in her smart city clothes telling her laughing friends about the little house; “Well, you should have seen it when I came,” she would tell them, “you should have seen the place the first night I walked in. Murky little lamps, and the place simply crawling with bric-a-brac, and a stuffed moose head—
really
, a stuffed moose head, I mean it—and Aunt's sewing on the table, and what was positively her last cup in the sink.” Will I tell them, she wondered, about how Aunt set her sewing down when she was ready to die? And never finished her magazine, and hung up her sweater, and felt her heart go? “You should have seen it when I came,” she would tell them, sipping from her glass, “dark, and dismal; I used to come here when I was a child, but I honestly never remembered it as such a mess. It couldn't have come as more of a surprise, her leaving me the house, I never dreamed of having it.”

Suddenly guilty, she touched the cold coffeepot with a gentle finger. I'll clean you tomorrow, she thought; I'm sorry I never got to the funeral, I should have tried to come. Tomorrow I'll start cleaning. Then she whirled, startled, at the knock at the back door; I hadn't realized it was so quiet here, she thought, and breathed again and moved quickly to the door. “Who is it?” she said. “Just a minute.” Her hands shaking, she unlocked and opened the door. “Who is it?” she said into the darkness, and then smiled timidly at the two old faces regarding her. “Oh,” she said, “how do you do?”

“You'll be the niece? Miss Elizabeth?”

“Yes.” Two old pussycats, she thought, wearing hats with flowers, couldn't wait to get a look at me. “Hello,” she said, thinking, I'm the charming niece Elizabeth, and this is my house now.

“We are the Dolson sisters. I am Miss Amanda Dolson. This is my sister Miss Caroline Dolson.”

“We're your nearest neighbors.” Miss Caroline put a thin brown hand on Elizabeth's sleeve. “We live down the lane. We were your poor poor aunt's nearest neighbors. But we didn't hear anything.”

Miss Amanda moved a little forward and Elizabeth stepped back. “Won't you come in?” Elizabeth asked, remembering her manners. “Come into the parlor. I was just looking at the house. I only just got here,” she said, moving backward, “I was just turning on some lights.”

“We saw the lights.” Miss Amanda went unerringly toward the little parlor. “This is not our formal call, you understand; we pay our calls by day. But I confess we wondered at the lights.”

“We thought
he
had come back.” Miss Caroline's hand was on Elizabeth's sleeve again, as though she were leading Elizabeth to the parlor. “They say they do, you know.”

Miss Amanda seated herself, as though by right of long acquaintance, on the soft chair by the low table, and Miss Caroline took the only other comfortable chair; my own house indeed, Elizabeth thought, and sat down uneasily on a stiff chair near the door; I must get lamps first thing tomorrow, she thought, the better to see people with.

“Have you lived here long?” she asked foolishly.

“I hope you don't plan to change things,” Miss Amanda said. “Aunt loved her little house, you know.”

“I haven't had much time to plan.”

“You'll find everything just the way she left it. I myself took her pocketbook upstairs and put it into the drawer of the commode. Otherwise nothing has been touched. Except the body, of course.”

Oh, that's not still here? she wanted to ask, but said instead, “I used to come here when I was a child.”

“So he wasn't after her money,” Miss Caroline said. “Sister took her pocketbook off the kitchen table; I saw her do it. She took it upstairs and nothing was missing.”

Miss Amanda leaned a little forward. “You'll be bringing in television sets? From the city? Radios?”

“I hadn't thought much about it yet.”

“We'll be able to hear your television set, no doubt. We are your closest neighbors and we see your lights; no doubt your television set will be very loud.”

“We would have heard if she had screamed,” Miss Caroline said, lifting her thin hand in emphasis. “They say she must have recognized him, and indeed it is my belief that Sheriff Knowlton has a very shrewd notion who he is. It is my belief that we all have our suspicions.”

“Sister, this is gossip. Miss Elizabeth detests gossip.”

“We were here the first thing in the morning, Miss Elizabeth, and I spoke to the Sheriff myself.”

“Sister, Miss Elizabeth does not trouble her mind with wild stories. Let Miss Elizabeth remember Aunt as happy.”

“I don't understand.” Elizabeth looked from one of the tight old faces to the other; the two old bats, she thought, and said, “My aunt died of a heart attack, they said.”

“It is
my
belief—”

“My sister is fond of gossip, Miss Elizabeth. I suppose you'll be packing away all of Aunt's pretty things?”

Elizabeth glanced at the table near her. A pink china box, a glass paperweight, a crocheted doily on which rested a set of blue porcelain kittens. “Some of them,” she said.

“To make room for the television set. Poor Aunt; she thought a good deal of her small possessions.” She frowned. “You won't find an ash tray in here.”

Elizabeth put her cigarette down defiantly on the lid of the small pink box.

“Sister,” Miss Amanda said, “bring Miss Elizabeth a saucer from the kitchen, from the daily china. Not the floral set.”

Miss Caroline, looking shocked, hurried from the room, holding her heavy skirt away from the tables and Elizabeth's cigarette. Miss Amanda leaned forward again. “I do not permit my sister to gossip, Miss Elizabeth. You are wrong to encourage her.”

“But what is she trying to say about my aunt?”

“Aunt has been dead and buried for two months. You were not, I think, at the funeral?”

“I couldn't get away.”