The Angry Woman Suite (17 page)

***

He was visiting with Mother when I arrived home to Washington’s Headquarters from graduation ceremonies. We slapped each other’s backs, hugging like men do, shoulder blades touching.

My mother, a worn woman with white-streaked hair pulled into a tight bun, wiped her hands on her apron and declined Matthew’s admonition to stay seated.

“I like your company,” Matthew said kindly.

I said, “Gin would be fine, Mother,” dismissing her. I grinned at Matthew. His chin had grazed my shoulder and I was vaguely surprised. Despite having stood next to him countless times,
and
put in my place more times than I cared to remember, I still thought of Matthew Waterston and myself as standing shoulder to shoulder, of seeing eye to eye. It’s what I
wanted
to think. That I was in the company of interesting men because I also was interesting.

Matthew was just medium height, though, but carried himself smoothly, which was the first thing I’d noticed when we’d met five years earlier, when I’d taken welcoming libations across the road, unable to wait any longer to meet the much-lauded artist for myself. The next things I noticed were that his attire was careless—an old jacket with patches at the elbows—and his hair thick and long to his collar, lightly streaked at the temples, and his moustache more gray than dark. He didn’t look like a celebrity, but then what kind of celebrity leaves a much-storied compound in Maine to summer at an abandoned mill house in Chadds Ford?

Actually, I’d always known the old mill house across the road from Washington’s Headquarters had possibilities, even if no one until Matthew Waterston had seen the same things. Set amidst acres of overgrown meadow, complete with its picturesque and useless water mill, the mill house reminded me of a pencil drawing in a history book: huge, poetic and classic. Matthew had begun sprucing it up, completely restoring the interior, cleaning years of built-up gunk off the floor of the great room, until its gleaming wood competed with the mill house’s vast number of windows for shine. The kitchen retained its original knotty-pine cabinetry, which had also been scrubbed and polished to a high sheen. I’d pressed a knothole in the kitchen siding, sliding open a hidden door that Turners from two generations earlier had used to take in runaway slaves, a door that blended beautifully with the rest of the cabinetry.

“Who’d have known?” Matthew marveled.

“A historian,” I replied, thinking us off to a fine start. We stepped through the doorway and into a small courtyard at the back of the mill house. Below, one level down, was the old water mill itself, and a hundred yards to the right was the carriage house in the last stages of its remodel, with windows being installed top to bottom where solid walls had once been. It was to be Matthew Waterston’s studio, where he’d teach his students, five of them that first year.

On the night Matthew told me of Sahar, he and I’d known each other two weeks, touching base nearly every evening, having gins together. We’d settled in lawn chairs under an old oak on the grounds of the mill house, reveling in the kind of relaxation only accomplishment gives. I’d had the best day yet at my museum, escorting numerous visitors about the site of the Great Battle, doing my best to bring it to life, to impress upon my audience the supreme importance of the place. I’d nearly 7,000 signatures in my guest log, a fact I’d shared with Matthew, and I’d just taken delivery of two new showcases for my relics, thanks to Lear Grayson’s largesse, a fact I’d also shared. I was a busy man, I’d just finished pointing out, and all the more so lately because I was becoming a sought after dinner speaker on the subject of the Battle of Brandywine.

“Sahar would like it here,” Matthew managed to interject. “She loves a good warm summer.”

“Sahar?”

“My wife.”

“Your wife?” I picked at something on my trouser leg, aiming for just the right amount of nonchalance. On the face of it, Matthew seemed as devoted to gin and cigars and the other appurtenances of bachelorhood as I. He’d never mentioned a wife. He certainly didn’t
look
married.

“I also have a son. In Maine.”

Of course Matthew would’ve expected me to ask why his wife and son hadn’t accompanied him to Chadds Ford, or at the very least to ask
about
them, what they were like, where the son went to school, standard conversation fodder. But I didn’t—and Matthew never mentioned Sahar again, not once during the subsequent four years he summered alone at Chadds Ford. Strangely enough, even after Jamie came to board with me for the school term,
he
never mentioned his mother either. Neither did he receive letters from her while he lived with me. Looking back, I marvel at the breadth of my self-focus. I marvel that I never wondered what it was in Maine that Matthew and Jamie had been trying to escape.

I marvel at the depth of my abhorrence for intimacy.

But my world did go on to broaden in other respects. For one thing, surprisingly, I became friends with Lear Grayson, which came about when Lear was recommended to Matthew for investment counsel. Lear and Matthew hit it off and Lear also began dropping by the mill house several evenings a week. That was actually the beginning of my awe, watching Matthew break through the tomb of elegiac reserve that was Lear’s cocoon. He did it beautifully, asking questions, pausing at the right moments, letting sentences dangle so Lear could pick them up, listening intently to Lear’s responses. And once Lear had enough gins under his belt, his tongue loosened and he became amusing, friendly, and even funny while expounding on Elizabeth Grayson, her inexplicable moods and sharp tongue, the sheer meanness of her, things I understood about women even when sober, things that corroborated my initial impression of Elizabeth, things that validated
me.
Lear never spoke of his daughters. They were not his misery. It was Elizabeth, always Elizabeth.

We were well into Matthew’s second summer at Chadds Ford when Lear came up with the idea of an art festival. Matthew never drank to excess, but Lear and I could scarcely sit up straight the night Lear made his proposal, so naturally we were completely undeterred by the expense, energy and sobriety such an undertaking would require. We drunkenly agreed I’d made a mighty stab at culture with my little museum, and with my school band we already had a semblance of music. We acknowledged Matthew Waterston as America’s finest painter—and if he’d loan us a collection, plus some of his students’ pieces, we could initiate a more than respectable art exhibition. In Lear, we had the right contacts and unparalleled business sense, and so the obvious was right in front of our glassy eyes: we were civilized men, patrons of the arts, and it was our duty,
our mission
,
to bring enlightenment to the masses.

Although Matthew seemed more amused than inspired, he did agree to underwrite the event with Lear, and even cajoled his old friend, N.C. Wyeth, into lending two of his works for our show. Our first festival, in 1912, in the East Chester Historical Society Hall, was attended by most of the area’s curious farmers and townspeople, and each summer, until it became a tradition with roots that no one remembered correctly, the East Chester and Chadds Ford Waterston Art Festival got larger and ever more elaborate, drawing visitors from all over Pennsylvania and Delaware, even New York.

At our second festival, which was a whole year in the planning and promoting, there were cake walks on Broad Street, and game booths and food kiosks and displays of crafts and finely-stitched quilts. I passed out handbills for my museum, and led my student band up the middle of Broad Street, directing them in rousing renditions of Souza and Foster, stopping the parade at the hall where the Waterston Institute works were on exhibit, where Lear stood watching.

“Uh-oh, trouble’s coming,” he said, looking past me. I turned to see Elizabeth Grayson taking hold of Lothian’s shoulder, shoving the child ahead of her. Absolutely tone-deaf, Lothian played the triangle for my band, a fairly safe assignment, and Lear had brought the ten-year-old into town with him. I was amazed that Elizabeth, hermit that she was, had managed to get herself to town. She marched up to Lear.

“Lothian has no business here,” she said, getting right up in his face. “It’s not a school day.”

Passers-by slowed, straining to hear, and I knew I should be moving the band along, but I was transfixed, rooted to the spot.

“She belongs
at home!”
Elizabeth screeched.
“And so do you!”

Then
I looked away, embarrassed for Lear, and glanced at Lothian as I directed the band up the street. Her gaze was riveted on her parents, and I saw, unbelievably, what looked like sheer hatred in that little girl’s eyes—and I flinched again. Anger and hatred were the worst emotions of all time; much, much more threatening than even love.

I was loath to let go of my indignation. “So he just
left,
” I reiterated, as if Matthew hadn’t stepped outside the town hall in time to see the embarrassing fiasco for himself. “Elizabeth tells Lear when to jump and he asks how high! What was he thinking, leaving? He’s supposed to oversee Festival, not go home! He was supposed to stay till the end!” Matthew and I were back at the mill house, under the oak, Matthew in a lawn chair looking reflective, and I pacing.

“You’ve never married,” Matthew mused.

“So?” I demanded. “What’s that to do with anything?”

“Elizabeth is angry at a situation, but not the one you think. When you’re married, it’s never the one you think.”

“I’ve no idea what—”

“Of course you don’t.
Think, Aidan
. What’s the one thing Lear
never
talks about?”

I knew immediately. His progeny with Elizabeth: the monster named Stella. The one who couldn’t speak. The one no one ever saw. The freak. The freak who had to be someone else’s fault because something freakish is
invariably
someone else’s fault—Stella was the one subject that Lear never brought up, even when he’d too much to drink.

“It’s the Stella child!
It is, isn’t it, Matthew?
She’s real!
Did Lear tell you? I’m always the last to know … well, just never mind. What’s Elizabeth going to do, punish Lear his whole damn life because Stella’s real—and
he
spawned her? And Lear’s just going to
let
Elizabeth?” Even as the words jutted out of me, another part of me conjured up Lear’s alternatives. Divorce was unthinkable. Nobody ever got divorced; no one but real losers; fast, easy people, but there was no one like that in three, maybe four counties. No, divorce was unthinkable. I leaned in toward Matthew. I had to know.

“Is it true? Is the child real? Is she a
monster?”

Matthew sighed. “You know, Aidan, you think you have the right answers to everything, but you don’t even have the right questions.”

I pulled back, stung.

“Never mind. I have hope for you. Unlike some people, you at least know you’re not engaged … not with your mother, not with me, not Lear, not with anybody. Not really. Because if you were, you’d know things. Simple things. But you’re happy as a clam puttering away on your museum and your music and this festival, which is all well and good—but until, and if, you’re ever truly
engaged
with someone who’s real and breathing and inconsistent, and I mean someone
over
twelve years old, Aidan, you’re missing some frames for reference—in other words, you know nothing, my friend.”

I was sluiced into
major
offended dignity. There’d been no call to slam me, and although Matthew’s tone hadn’t been truly unkind, the words hurt because he’d hit pay dirt: I
was
critical. Plus, I’d never had the desire to become better acquainted with reasons for my reactions, as in recognizing that my annoyance with Lear that day had little to do with him leaving Festival early, so much as it did him leaving me,
us, Festival, for Elizabeth, who’d been so rudely dismissive of
me
during my first visit to Grayson House.

So there we were. Back to me again.

Whoever it was that said lies hurt is full of shit. Fact is, reality hurts, especially when delivered by icons. I went straight home to Washington’s Headquarters after Matthew passed judgment on me, to my relics, to my long-suffering mother, and in my sleep, half-waking, half-dreaming, I hugged myself against the reality coming out of and around me, against what I didn’t want to see and against what I thought I’d seen—and not the least of that had been the murderous look in little Lothian Grayson’s eyes.

ELYSE
Sacramento 1955

One night, back in those lovely Sacramento days before Francis and the horror of Biloxi, I got to feeling unusually put out over all the different sorts of men visiting our house and patting Aunt Rose’s butt and making so much noise and music I could barely think. Papa saw my bottom lip sticking out a foot and said mildly, “It’s
viel
besser
not to go through life showing your underwear, Elyse
.
”

I’d been pacing—we were out on the patio, smoked out by Aunt Rose’s company—but
that
stopped me. “What?” Terrified the elastic on my underpants had given way, I looked down.

“It’s a
Hüllwort,
” Papa said with a slight smile.

“English,” I said, automatically, just like Mother.

“A euphemism.”

I thought this over for just a second. “Well, I don’t like those,” I fumed. And then, “What are they?”

“In this case, a nice way of saying the world could use a little more truth.”

He was on his truth train again.

“Well, Papa, I just don’t see the point to all these people here. Grandma’s got the night off—”

“And you think it’d be nice if we could have an evening at home by—”

“Now shut the fuck up,” my grandmother said nicely to Papa, taking a drag off her own cigarette. “Let the girl talk.”

Mother was out for the evening, so we weren’t on what Aunt Rose called “Diana behavior.” Aunt Rose was getting her fanny pinched, Grandma was talking the way she couldn’t when Mother was around, and I was working myself up into a whale of a snit—and Bean, already fast asleep despite the racket, didn’t count. Papa, though, was more or less his everyday self, sizing up all of Aunt Rose’s drunk friends.