Mine to Tell (28 page)

I stopped walking and turned to him, ready to say something, I didn’t know what.

“Don’t talk,” he said again, and he took my elbow and steered me forward to Julianne’s house. “I don’t know how to apologize for the relationship we had and what happened to it. All I can say is that I’m glad we didn’t get married. It would have been disastrous.”

I felt myself go cold inside. It was easier to understand a man who was angry at me than one who agreed with me. When he was angry, he took over the old silly Trevor I had loved and buried. Now that old Trevor was really gone. It jolted me.

“I’m sorry for the way I treated you, Annabelle. You are a woman worthy of far more respect than that.”

After that he talked about his job, Cincinnati, and my friends he saw on occasion. When we reached my door, I didn’t feel I’d been pelted with large doses of him or his contrition. He’d spoken with a different air, not one that ran right past me as if I didn’t matter, not one that hated me and was blaming me because I didn’t make his life work out the way he wanted, and not one that wanted to bully me into forgiving him so he would feel better. He spoke to me and about me. I didn’t feel badgered and I didn’t feel ignored and I didn’t feel manipulated.

“Well, goodbye,” he said. “Thank you for letting me walk you home.”

I stood at Julianne’s front door and watched Trevor’s back as he walked away from my house. He wasn’t hurrying to catch the opening action of the game like I would have expected. He was a man who had just completed a mission instead of a man on his way to one. He never turned and looked back. When he was out of sight, I went inside and closed the door, knowing I’d forgive him.

Chapter 50

“While seeing they do not see, and while hearing

they do not hear, nor do they understand.”

I was sitting in my house, mapping out a timeline and a genealogical tree of Isaac’s and Julianne’s lineage. The map had been growing in my mind, but not in black and white where I could see it and watch the order of her trek. I added John to the side, his “wife” and his two sons. I stared down at the course those people traveled over time, knowing invisible heart lines and illegalities were there too, wondering how God looked upon these three marriages, since he had the same bird’s-eye view I had.

Just as I finished, Kyle came to my door. I opened it to his easy smile, something that had grown easier and larger as we’d worked together.

“Come in,” I said, glad to see him. He followed me in as if this was his place too, Julianne’s house and life intermingled with both of ours.

“Look what I just finished,” I said, showing him the chart. He took it from my hands and studied it, every line, every name, everyone’s life in his face.

“I feel like our names should be on here too,” he said glancing at me. I screwed up my face, wondering how he fit in, when it dawned on me. It was in his eyes, this oneness he felt with these people, the life he’d given to them and partaken of from them.

“I’m still amazed that this has been so important to you.” I wanted to touch him, just lay a hand on his arm, but I let my eyes say it all.

“Let me just say this is who I am.” He looked at the chart and then back at me. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else right now.”

“Is this why you’ve stayed here all these years? I mean, you’re tied here, yet not. It’s like you’ve got a root here but another root ready to go somewhere else. Am I making any sense?”

He set the chart down and looked at me. “Perfect sense, but probably not to anyone else.”

We stood there facing each other for an eternity that should have been fraught with awkwardness and hemming and shuffling, but it was a peaceful eternity, one that suited us both.

“You know what I’d like to do today?” he asked.

“No, what?”

“Crawl back up into the attic. There are some loose ends up there we’ve never pieced into this puzzle. They’re important or she wouldn’t have hidden them away to make them a part of this story she’s trying to tell. Want to come with me?” He held out his hand, his smile warm and inviting. I took it, and together we went up the stairs and climbed into Julianne’s hidden alcove.

Kyle and I settled ourselves on the soft rugs I’d left up there and eyed Julianne’s treasures in front of us. He adjusted our single light bulb over our heads so we could see everything clearly. He looked up at me, his eyes asking if I was ready, the light and excitement dancing in them as if he were a little boy with his sleigh perched at the crest of a high snowy hill. I nodded and grinned, our two souls becoming as one as we looked at the artifacts of a very special life in front of us.

He picked up the small stack of playbills and we stared at the scriptive print, understanding now that she had loved the theatre, but only in Chicago, never again a part of her life while she was here with Isaac.

“You knew something about this Oliver William Carmichael,” I said, pointing at the actor’s name and nodding at the funeral notice. “He must have been famous for you to know about him this many years later. And what about this Bridgett J. Haynes? Are you familiar with her, too?”

He fanned the playbills out in front of us, then chose one and moved it to last in the line.

“This play was later than the others,” he said, pointing at it. “It wasn’t staged until 1916, and she may have picked it up when she came to Chicago to discuss her marriage with John.”

“
Romeo and Juliet
? Kind of melodramatic, don’t you think? Especially since she’d seen it years before, when she fell in love with John.” I pointed to an earlier playbill.

“Oliver was in the first one, but not the second,” he pointed out. “But Bridgett was in it.” He looked at me. “What little I found on Oliver, he was married to a woman named Ingrid but always starred next to Bridgett. There were lots of rumors about the two of them, and they brought a lot of scandal to their plays. But no one ever knew for sure about them, just speculated, and always to the negative.”

I nodded, awed that life ran in such circles, all of us beating our way along the same arc of tragi-drama, looking for love that was just out of reach until we lost it. Ford, Moliere, Ibsen…every playwright retold the same tale, love lost, love sought, women oppressed and misunderstood. Didn’t we ever break free?

Kyle restacked the playbills and picked up Oliver’s funeral notice.
“ ‘The stage and the world will never be the same. He gave life and meaning to one-dimensional characters trapped on a page, and heart and love to those of us trapped in our own roles in life.’ ”
Kyle read aloud.
“ ‘bh,’
is signed below.”

“Bridgett wrote that?”

He shrugged while nodding, answering my question.

“My great-grandmother’s life has been on the stage too,” I mused. “She didn’t save these playbills or this funeral notice because she was a wanton and loose woman.”

“She saved them to help tell her story,” Kyle finished for me. “
Mine to Tell
.”

He set the funeral notice aside, next to the stack of play titles that all made sense now—
A Doll’s House
and
’Tis a Pity She’s a Whore
and others. I groaned. Stories of characters oppressed, misunderstood, trapped in judgments.

Kyle picked up the folded fan. He traced a finger along the lace and old paper, then drew it open. The life we’d felt when he opened it the first time was still there. It was still speaking, and now I understood it better. I gazed at the picture of the woman painted on the fan, her dark hair, and the swan nearby.

“My great-grandmother wasn’t a prisoner here like everyone thinks, was she?” I asked.

Kyle shook his head, agreeing with me. “No, she knew her own freedom. The swan, the fan, the serenity, all tell of white, bright freshness washing away the bonds that held her. She was okay,” he said looking up at me. “In spite of her circumstances, she wanted you to know that.”

I felt like crying as I looked away. Circumstances didn’t defeat her. She didn’t cow to them, she overcame. She was the victor in her life, she, and the God who forgave her.

By the time I looked up, Kyle was shuffling through the stack of postcards, and I remembered how I had concluded the scratched out names and addresses spoke of her guilt. But they didn’t. They were insignificant. What she wanted me to see was the story they told, not the story they weren’t telling.

“We’ve been such idiots all these years,” I said, as I picked from his hand the one she’d left on top, the one of a man and woman underneath a trellis of flowers.
“ ‘My dearest, I remember when…’ ”
I read aloud from the back. “Remember when what?” I asked Kyle.

He fanned out the other cards in his hands, looking at each one before he answered. Holidays, warm greetings and wishes, happy sentiments lay before us.

“Oh,” I said, embarrassed. I’d been so blind. “Happy memories. Part of her peace here.”

He smiled and restacked all of the cards into a pile and set them aside.

“Dried flowers,” he said as we looked where they lay, strewn across the shelf, some with stems, some without.

“I thought they were from Oliver’s funeral, the first time I saw them,” I confessed. “Thought he was significant, a heartthrob, or someone who gave her a place to escape to…making me no better than anyone else.” My voice was quiet, but my guilt roared. Kyle put a hand on my knee and left it there, telling me there was no more reason to condemn myself than there was to condemn her. Mustering up my courage, I placed my hand on top of his, the timid warmth of our two hands melding together.

“To flower is to be at your peak, to reproduce, to show what you truly are at your finest,” Kyle said beside me. I squeezed his hand as we looked at the dried ornaments of beauty, understanding her life didn’t stop here, it went on, its beauty remaining even after it had dried.

“I don’t know if I can take much more of this,” I said as I looked at the tray holding the dried container of ink, two pens, flint, and paper. Then at the stack of handkerchiefs, the hairbrush, and an atomizer.

“They were important to her,” Kyle said gently, and I felt ashamed that I’d been ready to push these things aside. He pointed at the ink container. “What do you think?” he asked, drawing me away from my remorse. “Mine to Tell? This is saying, ‘Look deeper, look harder, find where I’ve written my story,’ maybe. ‘The ink’s gone, it’s all here, nothing else to add.’ ”

“But the pens and the paper?” I asked.

He looked at me with a lopsided grin on his face. “That’s for you,” he said. “You’re transcribing her story, but you’ve also got yours to tell, now. Hers is done. Her ink is out. Take the flint, light your own way, and write.”

“Oh, my gosh,” I said. It was as if she had really known I was coming, her seed in me through the son she bore. Tears came so quickly I couldn’t stop them. I didn’t want to, either. They weren’t tears to be ashamed of or embarrassed about, they were hers and now they were mine. “Oh, my goodness.”

Kyle handed me one of the handkerchiefs. “You’re going to need these,” he said.

“Oh, my goodness,” I said again, ashamed that someone who wrote couldn’t think of anything more eloquent than those three simple words to say. Twice.

As I cried into the handkerchief, I watched Kyle pick up the hairbrush and atomizer.

He weighed them in his hands, as if thinking. “Venture any guess?” he asked, looking at me.

I dabbed at my tears with the handkerchief, not sure what to think or say.

He held up the atomizer. “Spread the scent of the flowers,” he said as if he was guessing. “And,” he held up the brush and looked at me, looked at my hair, looked beyond it at something else.

“Work through the tangles and make it shine,” I said.

“Good,” he congratulated me. He set the two items down and pointed at the tray. “That’s the thing that holds the small stuff together. Guess that’s the book. The story the two of you are telling.”

“She was brilliant,” I said, fully in awe. “Thank you, Kyle,” I said, wishing again I had better words to convey what I felt.

“No,
thank you
,” he said, as he rose to his knees. “You’re right. I’ve been half rooted, half not. I had some of me but not all. You’re helping me find all. You’ve helped me come alive.”

He took me by the hand and drew me to my knees also. He hugged me then. Wrapped his arms around me and held me, his warmth spreading into mine. Then he let go and, one behind the other, we left Julianne’s sanctuary, climbing through the trap door and coming to rest in the upstairs room she’d left empty.

As we started down the stairs, I heard the front door open and my mother’s voice fill the entry room.

“Annabelle,” she called. She rounded the corner as Kyle and I were halfway down the stairs. “Oh,” she muttered when she saw us, her voice falling. Kyle proceeded down the steps, undaunted by her reaction, her assumption we’d been upstairs alone and up to no good.

“Hello,” he said as he reached the bottom.

She barely nodded and turned to me. “You have two messages,” she said abruptly. I came down and stepped past Kyle to take the handwritten notes. “Call your editor, Edith, immediately,” my mother had written, conveying Edith’s usual urgency. And “Trevor called. He wants to speak with you,” was written with more care, more finesse, on the other.

She was glaring at Kyle, who seemed unaware of her dark stare. “I hope you’ll answer at least one of these right away,” she said, looking at me. I knew she meant Trevor’s.

I glanced up at Kyle.

He smiled and nodded. “See you later.” He smiled at my mother, who didn’t return the kindness, and he let himself out.

My mother turned her gaze on me. “You certainly don’t have to marry Trevor,” she said, “but I don’t like the way you’re carrying on here.”

I stepped to my mother’s side and put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t jump to conclusions,” I said, looking her in the eye. “Let me tell my story. I promise I’ll tell the truth.”

Chapter 51

“Let the dead bury their dead.”

I lived between houses, cooking and cleaning for Isaac and his boys in one, cooking and cleaning for me and for Samuel in the other. Samuel’s resemblance to Isaac was undeniable, and as he grew Isaac noticed, his eyes staying on the boy who followed me to their house when I worked for them. He eventually spoke to the boy, little words, then fragments of sentences, then full ones. He said more to Samuel than he ever did to me. Even when Isaac’s eyes said he knew now he’d misjudged the boy’s heritage, he still held to his condemnation of me. When Samuel was three, Isaac moved him to his house, the boy crying at first while I sang to him in his new bed in his new room upstairs. But he eventually adjusted and became a part of Isaac’s world as much as he was of mine.