Trouble With the Truth (9781476793498) (12 page)

Disheveled but triumphant, Fred joined us in Ben's bedroom. “He's sobered now,” he informed us. “But he insists on getting into his robe himself.” Then, shaking his head, Fred headed downstairs, pulling his soaked shirt away from his body like a particularly vile second skin.

“I
can talk to him,” Felicity said, pushing my father and me out into the hall. She left the door open at a seventy-degree angle, and, by leaning slightly to the left, we saw her burst into the steamy bathroom and embrace Ben with iron arms.

“Oh, Ben…Ben…my little Ben,” she crooned. “Someday you'll find a nice girl, someday, God willing.”

Ben began to cry. “I don't want a
nice
girl,” he sobbed into her shoulder.

Stroking his tear-sodden cheeks, Felicity led him into his room and to his bed. She sat at his side, still touching his face with her
palm. “You'll be so happy,” she said. “With a
young
girl, who'll learn everything
with
you—”

“I don't want a
young
girl,” said Ben sleepily.

“A girl that's just
right
, a girl like Lucresse,” crooned Felicity.

Ben right-angled up to a sitting position, his face stricken dry. “Like Lucresse?!” Then he thrust himself face-first into the pillow and moaned inconsolably.

Felicity caressed the back of his head, slowly, thoughtfully, and finally came out to us, closing the door silently behind her. “He'll be all right when he wakes up. I think he understood what I said.”

“Maybe,” my father said. “It's time we all went to bed.”

My father and Felicity went to their rooms, silently, through the separate doors. And I went to mine.

I was glad Ben was back. I was glad Felicity felt better about what she thought she had done. I was glad my father wasn't unduly upset about what had happened, that he'd swatted Ben back when Ben had punched him on the staircase, that he admired Ben as always, this time for his “stick-to-it-iveness.” The only circumstance I was not glad about was what Felicity had said, and what Ben now believed: that someday he'd find a girl like me.

Sitting in my own bed, listening to Ben's pillow-stifled cries through our adjoining bathroom, I almost cried for him. Finally, unable to stand it, I got out of bed, crept through our two bathroom doors into his room. Ben's face was hidden in the pillow, but he turned it toward the wall as I tiptoed over to him.

“Wha'd
'you
want?” he mumbled.

“Are you awake, Ben?”

“Christ, no.”

“I wanted you to know I know how you feel.”

“Swell.”

“And what Felicity said will happen. It won't.”

“You had no right to listen to what she said.”

“I couldn't help it.”

He sighed deeply.

“Ben?”

“Yes?”

“You'll find a nicer girl than me. There are a lot of them.”

He turned over, as though his sharp bones weighed a thousand pounds. He squinted at me and wiped a hand across his eyes. “No. There aren't many,” he said finally and smiled.

My throat hurt too much to talk, so I just smiled too. He closed his eyes again.

“The only trouble with Felicity is that she has no imagination,” he said sleepily. “That's why she was such a flop as an actress.”

“She would have been a nice mother though,” I said.

“That's right.
You
have more imagination than she has.” He breathed long and decisively. “If I don't go to sleep, I'm going to be sick again.”

I laid my hand on his head the way I'd seen Felicity do, then went back to my room, glowing with the heady knowledge that somehow I'd acquired the splendid asset of imagination. I lay in bed marveling at it and restored by the thought that all was well again, as it had been before the devil—romance—attacked Ben. And I forgot entirely about Aunt Catherine's letter until just before I, too, fell asleep.

A miserable sobriety descended on Ben and Felicity the next day. It even touched my father and Fred. All were subdued and withdrawn. No one referred to the explosive events of the night before. I thought any change that could be brought about—through a new thought, new news—was bound to alter the mood for the happier, and the only news I could think of was Aunt Catherine's letter.

Perhaps it was because of the time of day—midafternoon, Felicity's high point of every twenty-four hours—that the news of Aunt Catherine's visit was accepted as good and cheering. It was ten minutes before my father mentioned, as though it was of the utmost unimportance, “Of course she'll have to share your room, Lucresse.”

“And how do we explain
me
?” said Felicity, delving deeper into the subject. “How do we explain me in the guest room?”

“You have a job here,” quipped my father.

“What kind of job?” Ben said, looking threatening.

Ignoring him, my father addressed Felicity alone. “You've said you thought my accounts are in sad need of a neatening hand.”

“And they are.”

“All right then,” my father declared as though it were settled. “That's something Catherine will surely understand. You are my accountant, secretarial assistant, or clean-up squad if you prefer.”

“Clean-up squad will do,” Felicity said.

•  •  •

Over the ensuing weeks, Felicity became absorbed by her new calling. She unwrinkled vintage bills and orders and receipts. She recovered more recent forms recording payment for pieces of merchandise my father had sold, swift notations on the last time Ben and I had seen a dentist, and a two-paragraph command for cremation, ostensibly an “important document” of my father's (which he'd assumed he'd lost) to be enacted in the eventuality of his demise. All of these and several hundred other papers that defied categorizing, Felicity, in silk, apricot-colored beach pajamas, was putting into perfectly constructed pyramids on the study floor on December eighth when Aunt Catherine arrived.

Aunt Catherine's meeting with Felicity inspired Ben to hurry off early to school, to wheedle his speech teacher into letting him play a dual role in a forthcoming school production which would usurp all of his afternoon hours. But my father stood his ground. For a while during the first moments of the Aunt Catherine/Felicity introduction, I thought he might actually spend more time on the scene than was his custom when Aunt Catherine was on our premises—her reaction to his live-in “assistant” was so striking.

Lingering at breakfast with Felicity, my father, and me, Aunt Catherine instructed us all on the comparative disadvantages of being seated up front, in the middle, and at the back of a cross-country bus: back was bumpiest, middle was already taken, in front one had to abide the driver's abuse of laymen drivers. My father cut in saying, “No more, Catherine. Never more. Finally, by your own admission, you
must
try air travel. I'm going to make you. I'll get the ticket for your return.”

“Yes, Walter, yes,” she replied, preoccupied with inspecting Felicity across the table. Felicity smiled at her and went on eating her toast.

“Have you been doing this kind of—uh—sec'etarial work long, Miss Peddicord?” Aunt Catherine asked.

“Mrs.
Peddicord,” Felicity said, chewing. “No, I haven't, though it's the kind of work I looked for for years.”

“Oh?”

“Yes,” Felicity said. “I always yearned to be of assistance to someone.”

“Oh?”

“I just never knew where my talent lay before I met the Briards.”

My father, aiming at Felicity's ankle under the table, kicked mine by accident.

Aunt Catherine gave a short, shrill giggle. “I certainly do see where it'd take a lot of talent to sort out all
his
stuff,” she complimented.

“Of course that's not
all
I do, to assist.” Felicity raised her large eyelids very slowly and directed a limpid stare into Aunt Catherine's inquisitive face. “I play sort of nursemaid too.”

Here, Aunt Catherine felt on more solid ground. “Really?” she said. “Y'know, at home, most of the folks that keep nursemaids, the young oil folks, they try to get English-type girls, like Fred is. You hardly ever do see a Latin kind of type like you, Mrs. Peddicord.”

“Latin?” A battering laugh burst out of Felicity. “So you noticed the hair job? I've only had one touch-up since I've been here. But, Mrs. Tippet, I'm a far cry from Latin. Try again.”

My father kicked me again, and this time I let him know it with a pleading ouch.

“I beg your pardon?” Aunt Catherine said politely.

“I'm Jewish. It's one of the faiths. Real old one. Predates vaudeville.”

“Oh, yes—of course, I
know
,” Aunt Catherine said. “We have many people of the Jewish faith in Oklahoma.”

“In cages?”

“My goodness, no. Indeed, no,” Aunt Catherine replied quickly. “They're all very fine people.”

“No one's a louse?” asked Felicity, incredulous.

By the time I left for school, my father was making telephone calls
and plans to drive to Boynton Beach for the day. And that night, from the twin bed next to mine, Aunt Catherine whispered, “Don't trust that Peddicord woman, Lucresse. She's not what she's making out to be. I can tell. No Jew-woman wants to be a sec'etary-nursemaid.”

During the next week, there was a noticeable depletion of our household goods. My father made selling appointments by the dozen. He and Fred were gone a good part of every day, and two sets of china that always moved with us disappeared. Also a pair of Chinese ivory back-scratchers, the silver napkin rings that had originated in Louis XIV's silversmith's shop and had last been used as building and balancing toys by Ben and me, and a Renaissance multicolored vase left the house.

“Just see that you don't find a customer for that Greek's cowbell,” Felicity said one night. “I'm taking that with me when I leave.”

It was then that I knew that Felicity would not be with us forever.

Not forty-eight hours later she told me, alone, on the upstairs landing—she was going the next morning, early, by taxi, and I was not to get up to say good-bye. “I've caused enough trouble here,” she said. “I've already told Ben.”

I meant to mind her. But Aunt Catherine clattered across my room to the window before the morning light had reached my bed. And then I heard the bonging.

When I got both eyes open, Aunt Catherine was peeking through my pale white curtains and her back looked alarmed. I scurried out of bed and joined her.

“I'm sorry I woke you up,” she whispered. “But I couldn't see the whole path from my window. Will you just look at that!”

A car was parked on our driveway and Felicity and my father were walking on the path toward it, slowly, dallying as they went. He had on slippers, pajamas, and his old silk bathrobe, and was carrying her suitcase. She was wearing a bright yellow dress and carrying the heavy iron and bronze Athenian cowbell she had so admired. With each step, it tolled a low reverberating bong, which seemed to amuse both of them.

“I knew there was something about that woman,” Aunt Catherine whispered. “Taking the bell with her. She's a common thief, that's what she is.”

“He must have
given
it to her, Aunt Catherine,” I said.

“Sure! She talked him out of it. I swear that man'd let any thief and robber on earth talk him out of anything right in front of his nose.”

My father kissed Felicity on the cheek and put her suitcase in the
car. She got in, with a final, louder bong, and they both laughed again, on either side of the closed door, as the car pulled away.

“I knew that was no kind of housekeeper-woman. She was nothing but a fancy robber.”

It was impossible to convince her otherwise without telling her the truth about Felicity's visit, so I remained silent. But years later, I often wondered if Aunt Catherine assumed Felicity had something to do with the subsequent armed invasion.

It was just a few nights after Felicity's departure. Ben and I were on the scene because, one, while my father had always included us in his adult company, he genuinely welcomed our participation during Aunt Catherine's stays—possibly because our chatter permitted him to remain quiet without being impolite. And two, because Fred, who'd always seen to it that we went to bed at some fairly reasonable time, had recently begun to retire early. A doctor he'd consulted about a wax deposit in one ear had pried out not only the wax but Fred's admission that he was fatigued lately. To justify his bill, the M.D. had prescribed more rest and a bottle of pills to encourage it. So now Fred, having uncritically endured decades of my father's erratic schedule, hurried with righteous enjoyment to his isolated room off the kitchen and into deep, undisturbable sleep as soon as he finished the dinner dishes and admonished Ben and me, “Half past nine o'clock. Precisely. Remember now.”

Aunt Catherine was vigilantly mindful of this order, consulting the English ding-clock on the mantel every little while and calling out the extent of our remaining freedom. This evening, as our parole elapsed, we worked hard to invigorate the conversation. When Aunt Catherine sang, “Five minutes, children,” (we ignored her insult to our respective fourteen and fifteen years, knowing that her habits of speech were intractable) and talk was again lagging, I got desperate.

“Know what happened to me today?” I said brightly, drawing on an experience I might otherwise have kept to myself.

“What?” said Aunt Catherine, glancing once more at the clock.

“I swallowed a flea.”

“A flea!” she gasped.

“A
live
one?” asked Ben. He was being helpful, but also, someday he could be called upon to demonstrate how a person who swallowed a flea behaves, and he used every opportunity to prepare for his impending career as a famous actor.