More Than You Know (28 page)

pride of the village, isn’t it, Miss Leaf?” He said this as if repeating

an oft-repeated phrase. Pennsylvania, the Keystone State. Miss Leaf’s

garden, the pride of the village.

“Would be, people’d stop stealing my flowers. I’m not the town

florist, you know. People want flowers can plant their own.”

“We haven’t taken any of your flowers,” said Conary.

“Well, somebody has.”

“Have they?”

“Yes, all summer. Finally I tracked him up here, and what do I

find? You two!”

“We didn’t take them, Miss Leaf.”

“Well, I’d like to know who did! Look at that there!”

She pointed to the north corner of the burial grove, and I could

see an orange flash of color lying on the ground back there. It surprised

me, now that she pointed them out, that I hadn’t seen them when I

came in.

She was leading the way toward her flowers now, and we fol-

lowed her. She couldn’t see faces from any distance, but apparently

she could see daylilies. That’s what they were, quite a bunch of them,

closed and wilting. They were lying on the grave of Amos Haskell.

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Mercy Chatto could hardly conceal her pregnancy. She

was big as a washtub as the first trial got under way, and delivered the

baby at her mother’s house on the Neck shortly afterward. It was a

boy. She named him Seth, and her mother raised him as a Chatto. She

seemed dazed through the trials, unable to remember anything out of

the ordinary about the time leading up to Danial Haskell’s death. She

gave the impression she was waiting for something to happen that

never did.

It was easily established at the trials that, like Claris, she had clear

opportunity and quite possibly motive to commit the murder, and it was

this as much as anything else that prevented the juries from reaching a

verdict against Sallie. The prosecutor convinced jurors that the victim had

been murdered. He almost convinced them that the murderer was in the

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courtroom, but he never could persuade them without doubt that he had

the right person on trial.

When it was finally over, Mercy left for Europe, with her parents’

blessing. They couldn’t help but agree that there would be no normal life

for her in New England unless she changed her name, and maybe not

then. She made her way to Italy and finally settled in Rome, where again

she taught school, this time to rich American girls who were being “fin-

ished” abroad. She came to speak fluent if heavily accented Italian, and

when she died she was buried in the Stranger Cemetery in the shadow of

the pyramid of Gaius Cestius.

Seth Chatto was her only child. She left her effects to him, though

she had seen him only once since 1890, when he had been three years

old. The effects consisted of a small amount of jewelry, some watercolors

she had made of street scenes in her neighborhood of Campo de’ Fiori,

and two small tables with inlaid tops of
pietra dura,
one of which has

found its way to the parlor of the Dundee Inn, where it holds the guest

book.

Miss Chatto had attended an Anglican church in Rome, because

they held services in English. Acquaintances from the altar guild there

had undertaken to pack her belongings for return to the States. In a drawer

in one of the tables Mrs. Pym found a stack of papers in Miss Chatto’s

hand.

“My goodness, what’s this then? It looks like a confession.”

Rather hopefully she handed the papers to Miss Turner, who

opened to the middle. Scanning, Miss Turner said, “I believe it’s a story.”

This surprised neither of them. Many ladies attempted stories, hoping to

sell them to glossy magazines. To be published under noms de plume, of

course.

“Is it any good?” asked Mrs. Pym.

“Oh, I’m no judge,” said Miss Turner, although she thought she

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was. She was very partial to the works of Mary Roberts Rinehart. “What

do you think we should do about it?”

“Perhaps we should leave it in the drawer.”

“But not if it’s going to . . . you know. Embarrass her.”

“There must be someone in the congregation who would give us

an opinion.”

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We couldn’t go back to the burial ground. At least, I

couldn’t. I knew it was probably just kids annoying Miss Leaf, or a

tourist who’d heard about the famous garden, but I was upset about

those daylilies. Conary was troubled too, but for a different reason.

He didn’t want to keep running into Miss Leaf. She wasn’t a gossip,

but like most people in a village, she liked to know what was going

on around her, and she might have said something to somebody.

The next day was Friday of the last weekend before Labor

Day—we had barely one more week together. I hoped all day for a

message from Conary and watched the library door for him or Mary.

It was almost five o’clock when Mrs. Pease turned around to where

Mrs. Allen and I were mending Oz books.

“You know that Micmac boy come in here a little bit ago?”

Mrs. Allen did.

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“I filled out a temporary card for him, and you want to know

what he went out with?
The Maine Woods,
Henry David Thoreau!”

“No!” said Mrs. Allen.

“I thought, wouldn’t Mr. Thoreau be pleased?” said Mrs. Pease.

In my head, the light went on. Micmac! I made a beeline for

the Dickens shelf, and sure enough, the book was pushed in. He’d

been a handsome boy, not more than twelve. I hadn’t thought they

let them rake that young, but I’m sure they pretended to believe he

was older.

The note said,

Be at the top of Jellison’s road 11 am tomorrow. As soon

as I can, I’ll pick you up. Bring lunch.

All I had to do was think what to say to Edith. Just then a boy

named Ralph Ober came in, returning a stack of history books. “Your

grandfather all set to defend his title?” Mrs. Pease asked him.

“Yes, he is,” said Ralph. “Are you going?”

“We wouldn’t miss it,” she said.

“Are you going, Miss Gray?” He was a nice boy. I’d met him

over at the blacksmith shed, where he and some others were playing

horseshoes, and he always called me Miss Gray after that, because

Bowdoin Leach did.

“What is it?”

“Old-timers’ race. All the old sailors turn out in boats, begged

or borrowed, even some who were hands in the big ships in the days

of sail. It’s good fun.” Now that I think of it, I suppose Ralph was

flirting with me.

The next morning I said to Edith that I was going with some

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friends to watch the Retired Skippers’ Race and would be gone all

day. She said that was fine, but be home by dark. I promised.

I packed a lunch for two and put a sweater into my book bag—I

kept that bag with me always now; I couldn’t take any chance of Edith

snooping in my room, reading my diary—and set off. I stopped to see

if Kermit’s pig had recovered from her thumps. The pig was named

Gloria Swanson, and she appeared to be enjoying life. No more than

I was, though; I was on top of the world.

I sat on the swing in the playground beside the road to the point,

across from the primary. The day was gorgeous, and while I waited

for Conary I wrote in my diary. I wrote that the sun and the smell of

gardens and the glow of beach roses growing wild made the day seem

good enough to eat.

Soon I heard a motor coming, smooth and humming, so different

from the sound of Conary’s truck that he practically had to run over

my foot before I looked up.

The car he was driving looked like a yacht, there was so much

polished brass and gleaming wood and plush leather. Conary, beaming,

got out and came around to open the passenger door for me.

“What is this?” I must have been gaping. I couldn’t understand

the car, and meanwhile Conary looked so handsome smiling in the

sun that I could have fallen over and died.

“It’s a Packard.”

“No, I mean . . . where did you get it? And how?”

“It belongs to Mr. Britton,” he said.

“Who’s that?”

“He’s a big bug over in the summer colony. He leaves it here,

and I put it away for the winter for him.”

“Did he say we could use it?”

“He trusts me. They’re gone for the year; he had to go back

down to Philadelphia. I’ll polish her up and put her to bed tomorrow.”

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“It’s
beautiful.
” It was. I didn’t know a machine could be so

beautiful. Just standing near it I felt I’d been transformed into some

other order of creature. If I’d had a white linen dress and a parasol,

I’d have been Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt on a picnic from Campobello.

I stepped into the car, and Connie closed my door with a flourish, then

walked gravely around to the driver’s side. That took a minute; the

car was about twelve feet long. My seat was like a leather armchair,

and the dashboard was made of mahogany, gleaming like precious

metal.

We were off. Conary drove carefully out the Eastward road, and

at first all I noticed was the purr of the engine, the smooth satiny feel

of the leather, and a wish that everyone who had ever been mean to

me in my life would see me pass in this car, driven by the handsomest

boy in the world, and fall down gibbering on the ground in a jealous

faint. I came to when Connie turned onto the road to Unionville.

“Where are we going?”

“To the Bangor Fair,” he said.

I don’t know what I said. Probably screamed. Connie knew I

had wanted to go to a state fair, but Bangor was miles and miles away,

much too far to attempt in his rattletrap. He had done this for me,

stolen a car; we would be sent to jail. I pushed a chrome button on

the dash before me, and a door opened. Inside was a little compartment

full of driving gloves. There was a large brown pair with ridges sewn

into the backs, like the ridges your fingerbones make in the back of

your hand. There was a soft creamy white pair that . . . somehow got

onto my hands, the long soft cuffs reaching halfway to my elbows.

They smelled of lavender. I looked at my hands in the gloves, and it

seemed that my body parts were capable of independently coming to

belong to someone else. I wished I had a wide-brimmed hat with a

frothy veil, which I could tie beneath my chin.

We passed a farmer driving a tractor toward the village who

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tipped his hat to us. Obviously we were millionaires from Philadelphia.

I said, “We have to go back.”

“Want to see how fast she can go?” Connie answered. I was

scared, but of course I did want to. Connie gunned the motor, and the

car took off down the deserted road. I had to hold on to the seat to

keep from falling over.

“Slow down!” I yelled over the noise, not because I wanted to

but because it was too thrilling. It felt like a pleasure that didn’t belong

to us and would lead to ruin.

Connie was smiling as if he owned the world, but he did slow

down. “How are you doing?” he asked me over the noise of the wind

in our ears.

“I’m afraid. We shouldn’t be doing this.” I was also afraid that

I might talk him out of it. I wanted this day, the perfect buttery sun

like peach ice cream, the speed, the satin leather of the car seat, the

fair. Forbidden fruit, a day like no other. Most of all, the picture we

made, a young couple in love with no cares in the world. I wanted it,

and I wanted it to last forever.

“Wouldn’t he mind, if he knew? Mr. Britton?”

“I drive for him when he wants me. I drive his boat when they

go out fishing, or for picnics. I drive the cars when someone needs to

go to the train. He talks to me about my life. He said I should let him

know if I want to go to college.” Conary looked at me and made a

comical face. It made him feel proud that this big man respected him.

He had wanted me to know about it.

We were passing a meadow filled with sheep. They were all

trying to huddle under the shade tree, a huge maple.

“Do you? Want to go to college?”

“Do you?”

“I do if my father can afford it. I don’t know if he can, though.”

“I thought about it,” said Connie. “But I don’t know where it

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would lead. I know who I am here. If you go to college, then don’t

you have to go off to Boston or New York and have one of those jobs

where you sit indoors?”

I guessed you did. And Connie, out under the summer sky, his

hair ruffling, looked as if he were made for wind and sunlight. He was

a master of the physical universe, at home with beaches and sea, with

animals and engines, with Micmacs and with me. It was hard to imag-

ine him in a suit, at a desk, you’d have to kill off so many parts of

him to make it possible. And so easy to see him coming down some