A Purrfect Romance (18 page)

“All right, so she was irascible and stubborn. But you were, too, you know. You and Henrietta were both too stubborn for your own good. And out of all that came this stupid feud between our families and this crazy obsession with the apartment next door. That’s what it became, Dad, an obsession. As though I need another eighteen rooms for myself. It’s absolutely ridiculous. I don’t even have a family. Not yet . . .”

Mack paused again, his thoughts momentarily heading in a different direction.

“Though maybe, if—” he cut away from that thought before he got to it—“but we can talk about that later.” He forced himself back to the matter at hand. “Anyway, this is to let you know that from here on, there will be some changes at Harmon and Brewster. I promise I won’t scuttle the ship, but I’m going to run the firm with a lighter and a more considerate touch.” Mack leaned back in the chair, satisfied he’d made his point. He smiled broadly.

“And you can trust me on that,” he added.

And with those words, he felt the tension flow out of him and knew the first ease he’d had in days. The confrontation with his father had cleared out his demons, driven them all away, and left him with his peace of mind fully restored.

He got out of the chair, went into the kitchen, made a peanut butter sandwich, poured a big glass of milk and brought them back to the living room.

It was getting easier to win arguments with his father, now that the old man was dead. And now that the dust of battle had settled, he was ready to move on to the next item on his agenda.

Actually, Mack really liked discussing business matters with his father, who was, for him, still a partner and most trusted adviser; he now addressed his father’s picture as though the two men were in conference on a matter relating directly to Harmon & Brewster’s concerns.

“Now, about this other matter . . .”

He took a big bite of his sandwich and talked enthusiastically through the peanut butter.

“There’s this girl, Dad, a really special girl—well, I’ll be telling you more about her later.” He gestured with his sandwich toward the photo and gulped down a swallow of milk to clear his palate. “But here’s the thing. This girl is writing a book, too. Not our usual kind—I’m afraid it’s in some ways very much like Mrs. Willey’s, which you rejected—but I’ve been thinking. Maybe it’s something Harmon and Brewster should consider. Now, before you object, let me explain that even though it is only a cookbook, it has a valuable slant: family history. Gives me an idea for a whole line—maybe a new imprint—let me just run it by you, Dad, before you object. These are personal stories, memoirs with a historical-social perspective, the big changes in women’s lives. We would use these women’s diaries, their recipe collections, the record of their domestic events—everyday stuff—and bring it into the twenty-first century, with good photos . . .”

He was enthusiastic now, spinning out new ideas.

On the floor of the family room in 12A, Bridey and Marge were still sitting cross-legged, paging together through Henrietta’s manuscript, ignoring the mess that lay scattered all around them.

“You know, Bridey, this is really good stuff,” Marge said thoughtfully. She had gotten her reading glasses from her bag, and with the skinny tortoiseshell rims perched on her nose, she was an incongruous mix of wild-haired hippie and high-powered executive as she carefully examined the couple of chapters she had wrested away from Bridey. “With the right editor . . .”

“Absolutely. I absolutely agree.”

“No, I’m serious.” She took off her glasses and looked intently at Bridey.

“So am I.”

“No,” Marge said. Her giddy excitement was gone now and she was all business. “No, what I mean is,
Lady Fair
really could use this. We’d have to buy the rights from the estate, of course—I’ll get our legal guys on it first thing tomorrow—and we’d do a whole spread on this apartment, too. It’s a natural.”

“Whoa! You’re going too fast.”

“Not at all. Come on, let’s clean up this junk.” She waved her hand at the odds and ends that lay scattered about them, the stuff she’d pulled out of the cabinet along with the storage box, the family photos and old postcards and silly knickknacks, souvenirs of the Willeys’ travels, childhood mementoes, stuff that had been packed together with the manuscript, stuff she’d tossed about in her excitement. “Let’s just pack it all back where I found it and take this book off to a copy center.”

Bridey started to gather various items from the floor, while Marge was busy replacing the ribbon around the manuscript, tying a careless bow.

“I need a couple of rubber bands,” Marge said, “just for safety.” She glanced up briefly as though maybe a rubber band was lying there on the floor, just waiting to jump into her fingers. “Look around, see if you can find some. Maybe you could dig up a couple in the library.”

But Bridey didn’t respond.

“Bridey?”

Bridey still didn’t answer, and Marge looked up from the manuscript in her hands.

Bridey was on her knees, staring at a small wooden box she was holding in her hands, a box about the size of a loaf pan. Her face had gone pale, and the spooked look was back in her eyes.

“What’s this doing in here?” she said.

There was an unnatural quiver in her voice.

“What’s what doing in here?” Marge went on tying.

“My Merrill box.”

Marge glanced over casually and read the name on the little brass plate. She’d seen Bridey’s recipe box a hundred times and couldn’t see anything odd about it. Just the same old wooden box Bridey had treasured through all the years she’d known her. The same old box, scratched and worn, with the little brass plate on top and the name Merrill etched on it.

“I don’t know. Where should it be?”

Even as she said it, it dawned on her that it shouldn’t be in the family room, mixed in with Henrietta’s junk.

“It should be in the kitchen. That’s where I always keep it. How did it get in here?” Bridey was so pale, her face was like milk.

“Beats me. Poltergeists?”

“Don’t be funny, Marge. This is scary.”

“Maybe one of the cleaning people moved it. Or something. You look terrible, Bridey. Are you all right?”

Bridey stood up shakily. Without a word, she walked out of the room, still holding the box in one hand.

In a moment she was back, and she was not only paler than ever, absolutely all the color had drained out of her face and tiny blue veins could be seen under her skin. She looked helplessly at Marge.

Silently, she held out two identical Merrill boxes, one in each hand.

T
hey both stared at the two boxes.

“Omigod,” Marge whispered.

Bridey’s hands were shaking and her mouth kept opening and then closing as her mind tried to make sense of what she was seeing. The impossible was taking shape in her head, but there were no words yet to give it expression.

“You’d better sit down,” Marge said. “You look awfully pale.”

Bridey sank to the floor.

“Let me get you some water.” Marge ran into the nearest bathroom, grabbed a glass and filled it from the tap. When she got back, Bridey was still staring at the two boxes.

There was no question about it. They were identical, both of them scratched and worn, the brass hinges and clasps equally discolored with age. Each had its little brass plate on top, and the name Merrill was etched on both.

Unsteadily, Marge set the glass on the floor, ignoring the splashes that fell on the carpet. She took the two boxes from Bridey’s unresisting fingers and put them down next to the glass.

“Here, drink this.”

Bridey obediently drank a few sips. Then she raised her eyes to Marge’s.

“What does it mean, Marge?” Her voice sounded ghostly.

Marge shook her head. She was turning pretty pale herself. “I don’t know,” she said.

They sat for a long time, just staring at the boxes.

Finally, as though she was afraid of her own voice, Marge whispered the words they were both thinking. “You’re going to have to open it.”

Bridey’s head barely moved, nodding slightly in unwilling agreement. “I know.”

Her eyes never left the boxes.

“Should I do it for you?” Marge asked.

Bridey took a huge, deep breath. She squared her shoulders. “No. I’ll do it.”

There was no question of her mixing up the two boxes; each of the little nicks and scratches on her own Merrill box was totally familiar to her. She reached out her shaking hand toward the other, flipped the catch with her thumbnail and lifted the lid, cautiously, as though she expected a trick snake to come flying out at her.

But no snake came flying out. It was just another box filled with cards, many of them frayed and stained from years of use, packed thickly together. Bridey knew, even before she got up the courage to inspect them, that they were recipe cards. What else could they be? And she already knew, with a chill running through her, that among them she would find duplicates of cards in her own box.

As though her fingers recognized them without her conscious help, she pulled out the oldest ones, the most yellowed and most frayed, and sure enough, there they were, like eerie messengers from another world: small, domestic treasures that belonged to a time long gone, to the time when Bridey’s great-grandmother’s grandmother first wrote them down.

There was Jane Merrill’s recipe for a hundred-weight of souse—pickled pigs’ feet and ears—made with her special blend of spices. And her recipes for curd tarts and rabbit pie and whortleberry pie. For Indian cake and plum duff and blancmange, for “dough-nuts” flavored with rose water or lemon brandy with just a gill of lively emptings, “should you be lacking an egg.”

“Emptings?” Marge asked, looking over Bridey’s shoulder.

“Sort of like yeast,” Bridey answered abstractedly, without looking around, still reading.

There were the recipes for carrot pie and hasty pudding and bird’s nest pudding (“of a quantity of pleasant apples”), and there were directions for making soap and for cleaning white kid gloves by rubbing them with cream of tartar, and remedies for the sick, and arrowroot jelly made with loaf sugar and brandy.

They were all there, Jane Hamilton Merrill’s secrets from the 1800s. But how could it be? It made no sense.

“Oh, Bridey.” Marge’s voice was almost a squeak. “This is giving me goose bumps. Look!” She held up her arm for Bridey to see.

Bridey didn’t look up to see Marge’s goose bumps. She had plenty of her own. Fearfully, but unable to stop herself, she felt at the back of the box where, sure enough, a piece of parchment had been placed. The words on the parchment were exactly what she’d known would be there.

Beneath that paragraph, the following had been added:

Bridey gasped audibly as she read her own ancestor’s name, her heart thumping violently. When she spoke, her voice sounded strangled, as though ordinary speech had become impossible.

“Look at this, Marge.” She handed the parchment to her friend. “And now look at this.” Out of her own Merrill box, she pulled a similar parchment, long since yellowed with age, and gave that one to Marge. The same words were written at the top.

Marge read the two parchments, comparing them, her eyes going from one to the other several times.

“I don’t get it,” Marge said. “How can they be the same?”

“I don’t get it either. Mine was given to my mother on the day she got married. And look,” she pointed to the words below, “look at what her mother wrote at the bottom.”

“Kieran.” Bridey whispered the names. “Mary and Kieran. My mother and father . . .”

“I feel like I’m in a time warp,” Marge said. “Things like this don’t happen.”

“No. No, they don’t. ”

They looked helplessly at all the papers strewn about, at the photos and the letters. And the
box.

“This is so scary,” Marge said.

I know,” Bridey whispered. “I know.”

They both were silent for a very long time while the shock of what they were seeing began to sink in. Then, finally, Bridey’s brain began to function. She looked around the room. She saw all the papers and photos tossed about on the floor.

“Maybe we should go through some of this stuff. Maybe we can find something to explain . . .”

Marge was already collecting papers.

“Here’s some old wedding pictures,” she said, gathering up a bunch. She brought them to Bridey. “Maybe they’ll tell us something.”

Carefully, so as not to damage the brittle paper that was already cracking in several places, Bridey examined an old wedding photo. In the center was the bride, a slim, delicately featured girl in an old-fashioned gown, the train fanned out, circling her feet. Her headdress was a simple band drawn back over bright, crinkly hair, with rosettes over each ear and the veil flowing back from her face. The groom, tall, dark and strikingly handsome in gray trousers and a cutaway coat, held her hands in his, and bridesmaids were ranged on either side of them. Bridey turned over the photo and read what was written on the back.
Caroline and Colum on their wedding day,
it said,
with Emily and the other bridesmaids.

Bridey was staring blankly into space, as though the past had suddenly parted its veil and she could make out what was revealed there.

“Caroline was my grandmother’s name,” Bridey said, barely getting the words out. “She was married to Colum Connors. She died before I was born, and I never knew her maiden name. When my parents were killed in that car crash and I went to live with my father’s family, they just called her Grandma Connors.”

She was still sitting on the floor, feeling as though her bones had gone weak, and the cats nuzzled up to her, rubbing their faces against her legs. Silk patted the picture gently, and Bridey absentmindedly lifted it up, out of her reach.

Marge was staring at Bridey as though her friend had suddenly grown an extra head. She took the photo from Bridey and handed her a couple of papers folded in quarters. In a voice that seemed awestruck, she said, “What about these?”

As Bridey opened the papers, the folded edges ripped slightly. She handled them as carefully as she could and read aloud from the first, the writing spidery fine and faded.

She stared at the letter in her hands, rereading it silently several times, touched to the heart by its sad message. “I knew my grandmother came to this country sometime in the late sixties,” Bridey said softly, “but I never realized . . . could that be why my father’s family never spoke her maiden name?”

Marge shrugged in confusion. “If she was the same Caroline Connors . . .” She pointed to the other letter. “What does that one say?”

Bridey opened it and read:

Bridey stared at the faded lines for a long time, lost in thought. Then suddenly the color flowed back into her face, and her eyes widened. She carefully refolded the letters, handed them to Marge and jumped up.

She ran out of the room. In the kitchen, where she’d left her tote bag, was the long family tree she’d been given at the kinship hearing. She dug about frantically for it, finally finding it stuffed in among subway maps, a receipt for three pairs of socks from The Gap and a half-finished crossword puzzle clipped from the
New York Times
. She ran back to the family room, where Marge was still gazing dumbstruck at nothing at all. She spread out the family tree on the floor, all seven feet of it, and got down on all fours to examine it. With one finger, she traced the line back from Henrietta through Emily Lloyd to Henrietta’s grandmother, Catherine Morton, who was married to Henry Lloyd. Catherine and Henry had had two daughters, but Mulie had been interested only in their eldest, Emily—Henrietta’s mother.

“But look,” Bridey said, pointing to the next box in the row. “I
knew
I’d seen that name. Here it is.” Her finger rested on the paper. “Emily had a younger sister. And her name was Caroline!”

“But that could mean . . .” Marge came to a dead stop. For once in her life, she was having trouble finding the words.

“Yes,” Bridey continued. “If the two Carolines were actually the same person,” she felt a shudder run up her spine as she spoke the impossible words aloud, “then Emily’s sister and my Grandma Connors were the same person.”

Marge was silent. She was staring at her friend as though Bridey had sprouted wings.

“And look, Marge.” Bridey’s finger went back along the family tree. “Look at the dates when Caroline’s parents died. Henry in 1958 and Catherine in 1963. My Grandma Connors—if she was their daughter—didn’t leave Ireland until after Catherine had died. Maybe she was unwilling to return until after her parents were gone.”

“Oh, Bridey,” Marge said. “I practically don’t dare say it.” She took a breath and then continued. “That would mean, you and Henrietta—”

“Don’t even say it, Marge. I mean, they’re common enough names—how could it—I mean, it couldn’t possibly be, but—” She had to stop because she couldn’t bring herself to say the words.

Marge said them for her. “That would make you—”

“I don’t know what it would make me. But if it were true, it would make me and Henrietta some kind of. . . something. I don’t know what.”

“Well, some kind of cousins, I think.”

“Omigod.”

“You said it. Omigod is right. What are you going to do?”

Bridey sat silently for a long minute. Then she sat back on her heels.

“I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to call Mr. Kinski. I’ll let him tell me what it means.”

“And if it means what I think it means—”

“Don’t say it, Marge. Don’t even think it! Just hand me the phone.”

Marge listened breathlessly while Bridey dialed. Together, they waited through several rings before there was an answer.

“I know it’s late,” she heard Bridey say, obviously in response to a sleepy Gerald Kinski. “But I have to talk to you now. Either that or spend a sleepless night.”

Marge settled into a big comfy armchair while Bridey told the attorney everything: how they’d decided to hunt for the manuscript, how they’d discovered Henrietta’s duplicate Merrill box, the letters and photos, the coincidences of names and dates, the whole crazy, improbable, impossible story.