The Benedict Bastard (A Benedict Hall Novel) (21 page)

C
HAPTER
20

When Mrs. Benedict asked for tickets for the last leg of their journey, the agent informed her, in disinterested fashion, that there was no Pullman on the route. “Second class only,” he said. He was, apparently, unimpressed by Mrs. Benedict’s fine clothes and expensive hat.

She frowned, and asked again. When he assured her the information was correct, she said, in a tone of real confusion, “Do you mean we have to sleep sitting up?”

“That’s it, ma’am,” he said brusquely. “You and every other passenger. This is a second-class train.”

“I don’t understand. Why is there no Pullman?”

“Ma’am,” he said, scowling. “There ain’t no Pullman on this route. Do you want the tickets or not? If not, move out of the way. I got other people waiting.”

Mrs. Benedict glanced over her shoulder at the short line behind her, and said, “Well, yes. Two, please. The best you have.”

“I told you,” he growled. “All the same on this train.”

“Very well.” She sniffed, and opened her handbag. “Near the dining car, then.”

“Seats not assigned,” the agent responded wearily. “You have to change trains at Wallula, mind. Don’t sleep through or you’ll end up in Spokane.”

Bronwyn gave him a small, surreptitious smile, and he surprised her with a wink, even as he unceremoniously shoved the two tickets under the partition of his cubicle.

The car they stepped up into wasn’t unpleasant at all. It was rather new, the velvet upholstery only a little shiny in places, and rows of small electric lights glowing overhead. They settled side by side into wide seats with worked metal armrests. Mrs. Benedict stowed the valise beneath her feet, and Bronwyn took off her hat so she could rest her head. She gazed through the window as they chugged out of the Portland train yard onto the tracks running alongside the massive Columbia River.

They soon learned the train had to stop at any station with its flag up. In places like Cooke and Goldendale, towns so small Bronwyn could hardly believe they had names, the train ground to a grudging halt before exposed wooden platforms. After taking on passengers or cargo, the train jolted forward again, wheels and rails whining together as it picked up speed. The pattern repeated every hour or so.

At first Bronwyn watched the river. It was so wide that in the gathering darkness she could hardly see the far bank. When she could no longer see the ebb and flow of the water, she turned her head the other way. Here and there lights glimmered in the distance, houses scattered on hilltops or nestled in valleys. Farms, she supposed. She wondered about the people there, living so far from any city or town. Perhaps they would be sitting down to supper. Perhaps they had spent the day laboring in the sun, and now, tired and hungry, they gathered around their tables, satisfied with the day’s work. Such a life, so different from the one she knew, seemed idyllic to her, purposeful and cozy and safe.

It had been a long, strange day after a long, strange week. She had slept little the night before. Her eyelids drooped, and she yawned. Soon she drowsed, and despite sitting up, and the frequent disruptions of tiny stations, she dreamed.

Her dream was, as it so often was, of Preston. But this time—perhaps because of the clanging of bells and blowing of steam whistles, or just the constant jostling—this time she didn’t dream of the magical night in the garden. In this dream, Preston was not the charming sophisticate who had so enchanted her. He was angry, cursing at her, his eyes dark with fury. He shook her with hard hands, so that in her dream she cried out and tried to get away from him. He seemed a monster, not the lover of her imagination. He frightened her, and she struggled to free herself.

She startled awake to find herself being shaken by Mrs. Benedict.

“Wallula,” Mrs. Benedict whispered in her ear.

Bronwyn blinked, and glanced around. Other passengers slept, some braced against the glass windows, others nodding over their folded arms. It was chilly in the car, and it was still dark outside. It seemed cruel to have her sleep interrupted yet again. She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept, undisturbed, through the night.

“We have to change,” Mrs. Benedict said. She bent to pull her valise out from beneath the seat, and clutched it close in her arms as she led the way out of the car and onto an uncovered platform beside the tracks. The station was a small wooden building with a single sleepy ticket agent dozing behind his window. Mrs. Benedict took a seat on a wooden bench, her coat tucked around her. Bronwyn pulled the collar of her sweater up to her chin, but she was still cold, and she paced back and forth in an effort to warm herself. As the sky began to brighten, the ticket agent came out to lower the flag to signal to the train. Five minutes later, the train to Walla Walla appeared, blowing an earsplitting blast on its whistle.

Bronwyn turned to Mrs. Benedict. She half expected her, at any moment, to come to her senses. She thought she might gasp, shiver suddenly, and press her hands to her cheeks as she realized where she was. She would blush, and apologize, and explain that since her son’s death she had been subject to such turns, times when she convinced herself Preston was alive, that he needed her.

Bronwyn meant, in that circumstance, to be kind and understanding. She would say soothing things, and promise to accompany the older woman back to her home, to help explain everything to her family.

None of this happened. The new train pulled in to the station, and Mrs. Benedict set out across the platform with a determined step. Bronwyn, yawning in the pre-dawn air, followed her. They settled on the first seats they could find, and Mrs. Benedict brought out sandwiches she must have bought at Union Station in Portland. She said brightly, “Breakfast!”

Mrs. Benedict showed no evidence of second thoughts when the conductor announced their arrival at Walla Walla. On the contrary, she glowed with excitement as they stepped down from the train into a hot, sunny morning. The station was newer than the big stations of Seattle and Portland, but far more modest, built of brick, with just one story. There was a ladies’ lounge off the simple lobby, and the two of them stopped in it to freshen up.

Bronwyn gazed at herself in the mirror, dismayed by the flaws in her appearance. Her borrowed dress was creased, and inevitably stained by two days of travel. She fluffed her hair with her fingers as best she could. She had natural curls, but they were pressed flat at the back of her head. She resolved to keep her hat on.

Mrs. Benedict, however, had brought a change of clothes in the brocade valise, and she was resplendent now in a summer frock and opaque white stockings. She wore an enormous gold brooch in the shape of a spray of flowers, studded with tiny rubies and emeralds. She took out a compact, and powdered her cheeks. Bronwyn splashed water on her face, but didn’t bother with anything else. In the clear daylight, the whole escapade seemed even more preposterous than it had the day before.

Three taxicabs waited outside the station. Mrs. Benedict chose the newest-looking vehicle, an enclosed sedan. The driver was polishing his windshield, but when she signaled to him with an imperious wave of her gloved hand, he hurried to jump into the driver’s seat. He started his motor and pulled out of the line to come up to the curb where the two of them waited. He jumped out with a jaunty tip of his hat and an eager “Good morning, ladies, good morning!” He took Mrs. Benedict’s valise, and held the door of his automobile for them to get in.

Mrs. Benedict bestowed a sunny smile on Bronwyn. “Almost there!” she said. And to the driver, “The Walla Walla Sanitarium, please. In College Place.”

Mrs. Benedict appeared utterly confident, sure of herself and her destination. Bronwyn’s heart fluttered uneasily beneath the dotted swiss bodice of her dress. She took off her hat, eyeing its bent brim with misgivings. She worked it with her fingers, trying to restore its shape, and trying not to think about what would happen when they arrived. Would it fall to her to explain Mrs. Benedict’s odd behavior? Would the people at this sanitarium perhaps hold her responsible?

The taxicab driver said cheerily, “Yes, ma’am. Walla Walla Sanitarium. My pleasure.” He touched his hat brim again, climbed into the driver’s seat, and they were off on the final stage of their improbable journey.

Bronwyn put her hat back on, and hugged herself as they drove. She felt the dryness of this place in her throat, as if she had swallowed dust. Her skin itched. The sun was punishing, burning the shrubberies and browning the lawns they passed. The images of the bad dream didn’t fade, as nightmares usually did, but stayed with her. She couldn’t shake off a sense of impending disaster.

Mrs. Benedict clearly felt no such sense of doom. She glanced in her compact two or three times, smiling at herself, tucking in a strand of hair. She said, in a confiding tone, “Preston wants me to color my hair. It’s gone gray now, but once I was a true blonde, just like he is—well, was.”

The change in verb tense startled Bronwyn. “Was—?” she ventured. Perhaps this was the moment when Mrs. Benedict would realize—

But Mrs. Benedict waved one white-gloved hand in a negligent gesture. “Oh, well, I mean when he was a boy, you know.” She smoothed her chignon with the palm of her glove. “He thinks I should do something about the gray, but I don’t see why it matters. I’m a grandmother, after all!” Her little laugh was like the shaking of tiny bells, incongruously girlish. Her eyes were brilliant in the glare of the sun.

None of it felt right, or natural. Mrs. Benedict’s gaiety was as brittle as glass. The taxicab bearing them to their destination had been too easy to command, as if the driver had just been waiting for two unescorted women to appear so he could carry them off to a place of his own choosing.

Bronwyn turned to the window, gazing blindly at sunbaked fields and weathered farmhouses, horses and cattle switching their tails against flies. She was still looking out when the sanitarium rose into her view.

The building was reassuringly solid, rising against the pale summer sky, three pillared stories surrounded by landscaped gardens and graveled paths. It looked much as Bronwyn had imagined a sanitarium should look, and it had a large sign proclaiming it T
HE
W
ALLA
W
ALLA
S
ANITARIUM,
in florid script. The taxicab swept up to the front steps without hesitation, and the driver smiled at them both in his mirror. Bronwyn’s feeling of dread began to seem foolish.

Whatever was to come, it was clear they were actually going to go inside this elegant place. She took her own compact out of her small handbag.

Mrs. Benedict swept her with a sly glance. “That’s right, dear,” she said softly. “You’ll want to look your best. You never know—you and Preston might work things out after all.”

 

The floor nurse came to tell him he was about to have visitors. She said the Dunlaps were bringing his mother up to see him, and she reminded him that it was a special privilege. “Not a visiting day,” she said sternly.

Preston barked a sour laugh at that. Special privileges came with the hefty fee the pater was paying every month to keep him here. Old Dunlap never failed to remind him of that. They treated him well, Dr. and Mrs. Dunlap, but Preston understood perfectly that their respect was due to the pater’s dollars, and not his own charming person.

He hadn’t, however, been expecting his mother. Her letters assured him she was trying, but that his father couldn’t spare Blake for the long drive. Something must have changed. He hoped she had brought the stone. Once he had it in his hands again, he would feel he could do anything. He would have the courage he needed.

He hurried to put on a fresh shirt and a pair of the good trousers his mother had sent to him. He wasn’t allowed cuff links, of course, or a tie, or even a belt. He folded back his shirt cuffs, though that made him look like a day laborer. There was nothing he could do about the belt. At least his shoes had a nice shine, since he had had plenty of time to polish them, though he had nothing much to polish them with. An orderly had shaved him just this morning, and of course he had no need of a barber. His hair—wasn’t. Completely burned away. He was as ready as he could make himself.

Odd that in the current circumstance, it was only for his mother that he would make such an effort. It wasn’t like him, but he felt sympathy for her. She had suffered a great deal, believing him dead. That was hardly his fault, but he had tried, in the few small ways he had at his disposal, to make it up to her. He had almost none of the feelings other people wasted their energy on, yet he clung to this shred of filial devotion. It made him feel virtuous.

Poor Mater. She was going to suffer again, and soon. She deserved better, but it couldn’t be helped.

He pressed his forehead to the tiny window in his door, peering down the corridor to watch his mother step out of the elevator. The Dunlaps were with her, and they were followed in their turn by a slender young woman with brown curls and a hesitant air.

He knew her instantly. Unlike himself, she had hardly changed at all. She looked a bit older, of course, but the difference between sixteen and nineteen wasn’t a significant one. She was wearing a dotted swiss frock that was a style unsuited to her, slightly too big and too long. It was as if she had lost weight, or made a bad purchase.

That didn’t seem like her. He remembered being impressed by her good clothes and her natural
chic,
though she had been so young. Deliciously young. Soft, in that unformed way young girls had. She had even been rather sweet, if a little silly, like her girlish mother.

He wondered if Bronwyn was still silly. She should have acquired a bit of seasoning, considering what had happened. He remembered thinking, three years ago, that the girl had potential, if she could avoid turning into her mother. It would be interesting to know if her potential had ever been realized. More likely, she had just given in, like other girls in her social class, followed the rules, found a husband, given up.