Poison to Purge Melancholy (2 page)

“A noble heart, you have, Ben Dunbar. If it’s means you want, well . . .” he looked about him, and though no one else occupied the street, brought his voice down almost to a whisper. “A few of us lads go about performing antics on Christmas Eve, and divide equally our take. With your fiddle along, I’ll wager we’d double our profits this year.”

“Antics? Mummery, you mean?” In the years before the war, bands of masked mummers—sometimes as many as a dozen separate companies an evening—had yearly come to demand entry upon the steps of Mr. Ivey’s townhouse in Norfolk, some on Christmas Eve, some New Year’s, some Twelfth Night. I’d watch them from the third floor window, until the mistress would send one of her manslaves out to chase them away without recompense. Like as not, they’d fire their pistols and muskets at the house, cursing the master, before moving on.

“In the best tradition,” Sam assured me. “St. George and the Dragon. This season our saint shall be Washington and our dragon, George the Third. We’ll end the evening at the Eagle and toast the Yule with rum punch. You know all the lads—Jim Parker, Will Knox, Alex Fisher—and I promised young Tom Carson he could shadow us.”

No sooner was the name out of Sam’s mouth, than the youth himself came running at us out of the darkness, wearing no coat, nor even his waistcoat. Young Tom was a boy of nine years, tall for his age, with the same broad, kind face as Thomas the elder as I remembered him before he’d died in camp not a week after the surrender. But this night the boy’s face was deformed in horror.

“Mr. Dunbar! Mr. Walker!” he called, his voice breaking into its highest falsetto so that he had to swallow hard to gain control of it. He halted, flustered, and performed an awkward bow. “Your pardon, sirs.”

As we hurried our steps to meet him, Sam lost his patience. “Manners be damned, boy. Tell us what’s the matter!”

Tom straightened, his breath coming fast, one hand quelling a stitch in his side. “Mother says to come at once. Mr. Brennan has took a fit, raving as one mad. Mr. Parker and Doctor Riddick fear they cannot restrain him much longer.”

December 24, Present Day

Fifteen minutes outside of
Richmond, I knew I was insane.

Wistfully, I recalled Christmas Eve last year. I’d goofed off at work until our department potluck began. My tray of chocolate pizzelles had brought kudos from my co-workers—the only time all year, so I’d lapped it up. After work, I’d gone to Uncle Mario’s for dinner. Since his wife was second-generation Sicilian, that meant seven fishes on Christmas Eve. I’m not crazy about the smelts or baccalà, but nobody does calamari like my Aunt Philomena. Good squid isn’t something I get every day.

This year would have been Aunt Sophie’s turn to invite me. Italian sausage and ricotta pie. And after midnight mass, we’d all go back to the house for homemade cannolis sprinkled with powdered sugar and shaved chocolate. Thinking about them now sent my drool glands into overdrive.

So what was I doing instead? I was battling the afternoon traffic on I-64, which was so crowded you couldn’t fit a riding mower in the spaces between cars. The sky was that shade of monotonous gray that makes bare tree limbs look the most bleak. Since the temperature was ten degrees above freezing, no pretty Christmas snow would come from those clouds—they existed solely to depress me. Worst of all, my destination was Williamsburg and the home of Gladys Lee, mother of the man I’d been seeing the last eight months.

Seeing? What an understatement. I was, after all, a Montella. Other people have “relationships.” Montellas simply rip out their own hearts and give them away. Hugh, as far as my gut was concerned, was It—Mr. Right, Soulmate Central. Why else would I be mentally cursing him out right now?

Not that I
minded
meeting Hugh’s family this weekend. I wanted to. Really. But no woman in her sane mind approaches this kind of first contact without her man at her side, right? Better yet, in front of her.

Sure, I understood that Hugh had to put in a full day at the post office—he was a mailman, after all, and up to his well-developed abs in late greeting cards and presents. And no, I hadn’t minded driving Miss Maggie to Richmond. Even if I had, I couldn’t say no to her.

Nearly eight months ago, Magnolia Shelby had brought me to Virginia because she had decided I should inherit her estate, Bell Run. The whole “why” of that decision would fill a book, so I won’t go into it here. Anyway, since I came to Bell Run to live with her, Miss Maggie has become not only my benefactor, but my mentor, housemate, and best friend (I reserved a ventricle for her before handing the rest of my heart over to Hugh). She was pushing ninety-two, and no longer drove a car, so I’d also become her chauffeur. Every Wednesday, I drove her to Richmond to visit her son Frank, who was a psychiatric patient at the VA Hospital. Frank wasn’t all that comfortable around me yet, so my routine was to stop in, say hello, then go fill a couple of hours reading in the car or shopping.

Today, though, was Miss Maggie’s Christmas visit—she’d stay with her son all afternoon. It was too cold to sit in the car, and shopping on the day before Christmas was my idea of self-inflicted torture. Still, I could have found
some
way to while away the hours. But no, Hugh had come up with a Brilliant Solution. I would drive Miss Maggie to Richmond, taking Hugh’s fourteen-year-old daughter Beth Ann with me. I would then drive on to Williamsburg so that Beth Ann could arrive early to help her grandmother with holiday preparations.

Translation: he wanted his moody kid out of his hair for the day.

Hugh would then stop for Miss Maggie on his way down to Williamsburg. She was a family friend of the Lees—practically a surrogate grandmother. Four of the five siblings had been her students back when she taught junior high history. As a teenager, Hugh had come out to Bell Run to do chores for Miss Maggie. After his wife died, and Hugh decided to leave Richmond and all memories of her behind, Miss Maggie helped him get a job at her new post office annex. When Hugh brought Beth Ann—then a toddler—to live in the postal service trailer at Bell Run, Miss Maggie started spending holidays with the Lee family.

So here I was, me and a teenager who’d said nothing since I picked her up this morning except “cheeseburger combo” when we stopped for lunch. The air in my Neon had been replaced with her sulkiness. I couldn’t take a breath without being aware of every one of the injustices she felt had been done to her in the last month, all of them somehow my fault.

That wasn’t just my normal Italian guilt kicking in. Familiarity
does
breed contempt. The more familiar I got with her father, the more contemptible I became in Beth Ann’s eyes. I was okay as a neighbor—she’d even liked me for a few months—but she wanted nothing to do with me as a potential stepmother.

Not that Hugh had ever suggested wedlock. I couldn’t blame him—his first marriage had been a nightmare, which is why I hadn’t brought up the subject, either. Fear of scaring him off. Problem was, Rule One in the Nice Italian Girl Manual, drilled into me by my mom and aunts, is “No sex until after you dance the Tarantella at your wedding reception.” Oh, I was willing to give up my “NIG” status for Hugh—like I said, we Montellas don’t have simple love affairs. We mate for life. Emotionally, I’d already taken all the vows.

Well, maybe not obedience.

But the main reason I’d been stalling Hugh off was Beth Ann. First of all, she was always around. Second, if Hugh and I did decide to get away for, say, a romantic weekend, she’d hate me all the more for it. Third, I was a role model. I didn’t want Beth Ann coming home pregnant or with AIDS or cervical cancer or even a bad self-image because I’d sent the wrong message.

I couldn’t stall much longer, though. Hugh had asked me two months ago what I wanted to do on New Year’s Eve. I’d always ushered in the New Year with aunts, uncles, and cousins—playing Michigan rummy until our midnight feast of porchetta and tomato pie—so I was naïve about how far in advance reservations had to be made. The upshot was that Hugh booked us at a swanky hotel in downtown Richmond for their New Year’s special, which included dinner, dancing, and a room with a king bed. I was looking forward to that night with an anticipation I hadn’t felt since I was ten, when I knew I was getting a five-speed bike for Christmas.

If only I could quiet the voice of my mother in my head (“You’re breaking my heart, Patricia Marie!”) or keep at bay the image of Beth Ann’s face—the betrayal on it when her father finally got around to telling her our plans for next week.

I glanced over at my passenger. Her face was slanted toward the window, and her long, fox-red hair hung down along her cheek so I couldn’t see her expression at all. I couldn’t picture myself as her stepmother. Or anyone’s mother—not yet, anyway, no matter how loud my biological clock was ticking—which was why I’d gone on the Pill two weeks ago (I would have gone on it sooner, but couldn’t get a GYN appointment until December).

Thing was, when she wasn’t sulking, Beth Ann was a great kid. Less self-centered than most teens. Big heart. Equally big brain that was fascinated by every green thing on the planet. I liked her a lot, and couldn’t help feeling that she and I would get along better if Hugh wouldn’t push us into mother-daughter situations like this little outing. That scared me, too. As affectionate as Hugh could be—extremely affectionate, in fact—some insecure part of my psyche wondered if he merely wanted me around to give himself a break from parenthood. Especially now that Beth Ann was old enough to ask questions about sex.

Though, come to think of it, even a question about sex would be welcome right now if it would end her silent treatment.

For the umpteenth time, I tried conversation. “Hey, no school until next year.”

I got a half grunt, the kind that implied that my comment wasn’t worth so much as a condescending roll of her eyes.

Second try: “I liked your band concert last week.”

“The drums screwed us up.”

“I thought it sounded fine.”

“How would
you
know?”

Was she criticizing my lack of musical knowledge? Or had she caught me nodding off during their last number? Not that it was boring—I’d never before heard “Jingle Bell Rock” played quite that slow, with a German oompah beat. I hadn’t been sleeping well, though, a combination of holiday stress and leg cramps—rheumatism, I thought, inherited from my mom, or maybe tendinitis from standing so much while I cooked batches of pizzelles to give as gifts. Anyway, for the last week, every night around eight, no matter where I was, my eyelids got heavy.

A change of subject was called for and it occurred to me that I could pump her for information at the same time. “Tell me about your grandmother.”

“She’s old.” No insult intended. A statement of fact, with a silent “duh” for punctuation. Hugh had said his mom was sixty-five. She’d retired this past year from an accounting job she’d held since her divorce, when Hugh was fourteen. Another reason to be intimidated by her—she’d survived an office job well over a decade longer than I had.

“I mean—” I paused to decide what I really did mean. “Tell me what sorts of things she likes.”

“Old things.”

I gave up on conversation.

* * *

Hugh had written the directions down for me but, of course, I couldn’t look at them and drive, too. I managed to remember exit number 238 before having to ask Beth Ann to read the rest. Since she saw the logic in my request, she agreed—one thing about her, no matter how grumpy she is, she stays logical—but between directions, she groused.

“Why’d Grandmom have to move, anyway?” she asked when we were stopped for a light on Route 132. A sign for a hotel sat up on the hill, but otherwise the area was more of a park, all trees and well-tended lawn. “I liked her other house.”

“Your father said her new place used to belong to your family. Your grandfather grew up there.”

“So it’s not a ‘new’ place. It’s
old
.”

“Old” was the word of the day. The light changed, I drove on.

“And,” Beth Ann continued, bent on proving my total lack of knowledge, “it isn’t Grandmom’s house. The Foundation owns it.”

Miss Maggie told me that the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation owns something like a hundred houses. The little Julia Bell Foundation that Miss Maggie and I dreamed up last May, and had been midwiving through birth pains since, only encompassed a couple hundred acres of mostly forest, which didn’t require much upkeep beyond trail maintenance, fire prevention, and discouraging vandals. I couldn’t imagine having to take care of a hundred houses, all in need of heating, painting, good roofs, and, worst of all, housecleaning.

“That’s probably why she moved,” I reasoned aloud. “All her kids are grown and she’s retired, so maybe having her own home was too much trouble for her. Now that she’s doing volunteer work for the Foundation, she’s able to share one of their houses with an employee.”

“That’s not what Dad said.”

To me, Hugh hadn’t said much at all, simply that his mom moved less than a month ago and was now sharing her father’s childhood home with someone named Evelyn. I knew Hugh wasn’t happy about it, but I assumed that had to do with her selling the old house without consulting him or any of his four siblings. Now I wondered. “What did he say?”

That was met with Beth Ann’s most profound silence yet, then, “I can’t tell you.”

I was willing to bet she wouldn’t tell me because she’d been eavesdropping—maybe while he was on the phone with one of his brothers—and she didn’t want to get caught. Especially since she tried to redirect my attention with, “Three blocks farther, you’ll make a left onto Francis Street.”

Route 132 was now Henry Street, the road narrowing as the trees gave way to low modern buildings on our right, then again, farther on, as older brick and clapboard shops lined the way. Older, but not very colonial, at least not colonial the way I remembered Old City Philadelphia, which is sort of what I’d expected, since Williamsburg had been the capital of Virginia when Philly was capital of Pennsylvania. Oh, this place was quaint all right, but the quaintness seemed more of a veneer, for the sake of luring shoppers. I was disappointed.

I hung a left where Beth Ann indicated and the scenery changed. On the right, set back across a wide lawn dotted with fat magnolia trees, was a dignified brick building, half a block wide and two stories high, with multi-pane windows and a white, domed cupola flanked by two massive chimneys. At last, architecture that had the same aura as Independence Hall. Was that the old capitol?